VIENNA, Austria - Abu Ghraib. Guantanamo. Haditha. America’s problems with Iraq are casting a long shadow over President Bush’s meeting with European Union leaders this week. The gathering is restricted to U.S. officials and the European Union leadership, and the agenda focuses on Iran’s nuclear ambitions, agricultural subsidies and the West’s dependence on imported oil and gas. But the United States’ precarious world standing will be the unspoken theme of Wednesday’s session in Vienna.
Austrian Chancellor Wolfgang Schuessel, whose country holds the rotating EU presidency, plans to urge Bush to close Guantanamo. Peter Pilz, a senior member of Austria’s Green party, says Schuessel should tell Bush “that the criminal actions of his government will not be tolerated in Europe.” Pilz is one of Austria’s more outspoken public figures. Still, his sentiments — that the U.S. is breaking the law in Iraq and in its larger fight against terror — are shared by many Europeans angry over the Iraq invasion, recent suicides at Guantanamo and the reported existence of secret CIA prisons in Europe and other countries of the world.
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