Germany

LONDON- The nuclear reprocessing issue is not going to disappear off the political map even though German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder last week overrode his environment minister and postponed legislation that would have led to a quick ending of the shipping of nuclear waste to reprocessing plants in Britain and France and also a fairly rapid closing of the country’s 19 nuclear power plants. The nuclear industry is a big and powerful lobby and, as the debate over compensation for broken contracts demonstrates, vast sums are at stake. But as the unanswered questions mount on both the issues of health and military security it can be only a matter of time before all rational governments introduce the kind of radical steps the German government initially announced. Indeed, Schroeder, despite his intervention on the side of delay, is committed to end the export of radioactive waste and the subsequent reprocessing within a handful...

LONDON–We would like to know what kind of stuff these German Greens are made of. The Kosovo to bomb or not to bomb decision arrived on their platter as soon as the election results were counted. Richard Holbrooke may now have got them off the hook as much as he did Slobodan Milosevic, but the issue on the use of the deployment of NATO force, and its ancillary decision, to use it without an explicit UN mandate, is very likely to return during their term of office. Supposedly pacifist inclined by early conviction, definitely pro United Nations and wary of enforcement or peacekeeping actions done in its name without a Security Council vote, the Greens are bound to be difficult bedfellows for western governments, who have a tendency to bend the rules on military intervention. The Kosovo decision had all the makings of an early clash between principle and realpolitik....