Rifkind hits back at Kohl
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Your support makes all the difference.MALCOLM RIFKIND, the Foreign Secretary, yesterday hit back at Germany's Chancellor, Helmut Kohl, who last week criticised Britain's opposition to closer European integration.
In a robust retort to Mr Kohl's comments, Mr Rifkind said the European Union would cease to exist unless all its member states could be accommodated.
His remarks came after Mr Kohl, in a speech at Louvain University in Belgium, spelt out the dangers of opposition to European integration, arguing: "European integration is in reality a question of war and peace in the 21st century". In an apparent reference to Britain, he added: "The slowest boat must not determine the speed of the fleet."
Mr Rifkind countered in robust language, arguing that: "The other side of that coin is that the convoy ceases to exist if you do not accommodate all the ships within the convoy, so you have to find a balance. You have to find a structure which all the countries concerned are comfortable with."
Mr Rifkind told BBC radio: "There are, of course, differences between Germany and Britain. I don't want to pretend we see eye-to-eye on these matters because they [Germany] wish to advocate a greater degree of integration than we believe the people of Europe will be comfortable with."
Mr Rifkind's comments are likely to put strain on Anglo-German relations in the run-up to this year's inter-governmental conference.
But Conservative Eurosceptics see Mr Kohl's growing alarm over the threat to the timetable for European monetary union as vindicating their position. John Redwood, the Eurosceptic former Cabinet minister, accused Mr Kohl of "looking backwards" and "living in the past", and insisted there was no need to disrupt western Europe's current "tried and tested" defence arrangements.
"I don't think it is the European Community which has kept the peace in Europe since the Second World War. I think it is Nato and the fact that the main European countries have very different attitudes to the countries of the 1930s," Mr Redwood told Radio 4's Today programme.
n Labour will demand the resignation of any minister criticised in Sir Richard Scott's potentially explosive report over the arms-to-Iraq affair.
Robin Cook, Shadow foreign secretary, will this week issue a public statement setting out how the Opposition will judge the report and the Government's response to it.
The long-awaited inquiry will be delivered to Ian Lang, President of the Board of Trade, this week and published on 15 February. Amid rumours that the Government is determined to brazen out the row over Scott, Mr Cook called for full implementation of the findings.
"Any minister who is criticised in the Scott report must leave office," he said. "If the Scott report finds that the Government did change the guidelines and deceive Parliament, there will be a need for someone to carry the can.
"It will be quite unacceptable if the report finds the Government guilty, and the Government decides that no minister was responsible."
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