Fitaloon at MicroShaft

Yesterday in Parliament Ann Winterton asked the following question

“When the Lisbon treaty comes into force, the European Council will become a formal institution of the European Union. As the UK member of that institution, will the Prime Minister confirm that he is bound by its rules and is thus obliged to further the objectives of the European Union in preference to those of the United Kingdom?”

To which the Prime Minister gave the following non-reply

We joined the European Union in the 1970s, and we hold by our obligations to the European Union, but that does not prevent us from representing the national sovereignty of this country.

However when it comes to war it seems that our co-operation and furthering of common objectives does not extend to helping our partners and resulted in the deaths of ten French Soldiers as the Times explains in this  article.

When ten French soldiers were killed last year in an ambush by Afghan insurgents in what had seemed a relatively peaceful area, the French public were horrified.

Their revulsion increased with the news that many of the dead soldiers had been mutilated — and with the publication of photographs showing the militants triumphantly sporting their victims’ flak jackets and weapons. The French had been in charge of the Sarobi area, east of Kabul, for only a month, taking over from the Italians; it was one of the biggest single losses of life by Nato forces in Afghanistan.

What the grieving nation did not know was that in the months before the French soldiers arrived in mid-2008, the Italian secret service had been paying tens of thousands of dollars to Taleban commanders and local warlords to keep the area quiet, The Times has learnt. The clandestine payments, whose existence was hidden from the incoming French forces, were disclosed by Western military officials.

US intelligence officials were flabbergasted when they found out through intercepted telephone conversations that the Italians had also been buying off militants, notably in Herat province in the far west. In June 2008, several weeks before the ambush, the US Ambassador in Rome made a démarche, or diplomatic protest, to the Berlusconi Government over allegations concerning the tactic.

When we can’t even co-operate in times of war how can we properly expect the EU to work.

French troops were killed after Italy hushed up ‘bribes’ to Taleban – Times Online.