By Tom Buerkle, International Herald Tribune - 28.9.95

Brussels - The European Union and the United States have agreed to work together in setting priorities for and distributing development and humanitarian assistance.

The agreement, worked out in meetings here last week between senior European Commission officials and J. Brian Atwood, the administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development, is viewed by both sides as a key area of cooperation under a broader trans-Atlantic initiative currently being negotiated.

The initiative, which Spanish officials hope President Bill Clinton will sign at the European Union summit meeting in Madrid on Dec. 15 and 16, is aimed at tightening trade and political links between Europe and the United States, possibly leading to a future trans-Atlantic free-trade area.

But agreement masks different agendas that could generate conflict.

For Mr. Atwood, whose agency has been targeted for elimination by Senator Jesse Helms, Republican of North Carolina, and whose budget would be slashed by 35 percent under a House of Representatives spending bill, Europe represents an ally with deep pockets and a firm commitment to the cause of foreign aid.

If the House spending cuts are approved, Mr. Atwood said in an interview here, "we're going to be seriously crippled in terms of our ability to support American foreign policy". The budgets cuts "make it essential that we cooperate with the Europeans", he said.

The Europeans, long frustrated by the fact that their much-larger aid budget has not given them the foreign influence to match the Americans, are determined not merely to bankroll U.S. policy.

"We will not pay their bill," Emma Bonino, the European commissioner for humanitarian affairs, said flatly in an interview.

Mrs. Bonino, a fiery activist who led the campaign to legalize abortion in Italy in the 1970s, has a budget that Mr. Atwood would envy. The European Commission Humanitarian Office, set up just three years ago, saw its budget jump 26 percent last year to 764 million European currency units to meet the crisis in Rwanda.

The European Union's 15 member states spent an additional 2.12 billion Ecus ($1.62 billion) on their own humanitarian programs, commission figures show, while U.S. humanitarian aid was 1.02 billion Ecus.

Mrs. Bonino's mission is to achieve a political profile to match the money and guard against public disillusion that aid to countries like Bosnia does not solve the underlying conflict, and may even prolong it when supplies are commandeered by local armies.

Humanitarian aid "is not a substitute to a political solution," she said. "Its goal is to soften the suffering of the people. "

In their effort to raise the visibility of EU aid efforts, officials agreed with Mr. Atwood that Europe would play the lead role in providing reconstruction aid to Bosnia, which the United States has estimated would cost $4 billion.

Other cooperation will involve joint aid needs and sharing of information and logistics. Officials want to avoid the chaos that occurred in Somalia.