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March 9, 2017, 7:31 AM EST March 9, 2017, 8:28 AM EST

European Union leadersredoubled their support for free-trade deals, in a show of opposition to the protectionist stance floated by the new U.S. administration.

Faced with President Donald Trumps America first economic policy and a resurgent anti-globalization mood in their own backyards, EU chiefs gathering in Brussels on Thursday are hoping to use their last full meeting before Dutch and French elections to make it clear that Europe demands and depends on free trade.

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Maybe now Europe is the beacon of free trade in the world at a time when there are more protectionist attitudes and policies elsewhere, Joseph Muscat, the prime minister of Malta, which currently holds the EU rotating presidency, said in a Bloomberg Television interview before the meeting. Theres a huge market in the world for free-trade deals, such as the one recently agreed between the 28-nation bloc and Canada, he said.

That suggestion of unity risks being upset by Poland, which threatened to withhold support for summit decisions amid a spat over the choice of the blocs president. The incumbent, Donald Tusk, is a former Polish prime minister whose bid for a second two-and-a-half term has attracted widespread support with one notable exception: the current Polish government of Prime Minister Beata Szydlo.

The EU leaders will discuss their trade stance at the summit after negotiations between the U.S. and the bloc have stalled over the proposed Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership. During his first address to Congress last week, Trump reiterated complaints that other countries charge very high tariffs and taxes and put U.S. products at a disadvantage.

As leaders descended on the Belgian capital -- almost certainly for the last time before British Prime Minister Theresa May triggers Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty to start negotiations on exiting the bloc -- EU diplomats completed a draft of the summits conclusions, warning against isolationist trade practices.

Protectionist tendencies are re-appearing, the leaders will say, according to the draft obtained by Bloomberg News. The EU remains strongly committed to a robust trade policy and an open and rules-based multilateral trading system, with a central role for the World Trade Organization.

By highlighting the role of the WTO, leaders are emphasizing the need for fair as well as free trade, diplomats said. The wording is also intended to send a signal to populist groups like Marine Le Pens National Front in France that are running for election on an anti-free trade ticket. The draft could be revised by leaders during the summit.

Its important for the European Union to take a united stand against unfair and protectionist practices whenever and wherever necessary, German Chancellor Angela Merkel told the lower house of parliament in Berlin on Thursday. Though we see nationalist and protectionist tendencies on the advance in parts of the world, Europe must never retreat, wall itself off or withdraw.

The U.K. premier will attend the summit before leaving the blocs 27 other leaders alone on Friday to discuss their plans for the future of the EU. That will culminate in a declaration at a special celebratory meeting in the Italian capital on March 25 to mark 60 years since the signing of the Treaty of Rome, which founded the bloc.

Thursdays summit, during which leaders have to decide whether to re-elect EU President Tusk for a second term, will also give governments the opportunity to reiterate their support for countries in the Western Balkans, which they say have come under pressure from concerted Russian destabilization campaigns and propaganda.

To read about how Poland threatens to sabotage the summit, click here.

While Tusk is widely expected to be re-elected, his own country may not sign off on the decision. Poland is opposed to the reappointment of their former premier because its current government says hes part of a Brussels establishment that has unfairly accused the it of eroding democratic standards.

Tusk is a very decent president, has done a good job in the past two-and-a-half years and should get another term, Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte told reporters in Brussels before the summit began.

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EU Leaders Take on Trump's 'America First' as Summit Talks Start - Bloomberg

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BRUSSELS As Britain hands the European Union its formal notice to quit this month, Brussels is resigned to losing part of the EU's western flank but is increasingly stressed that upset in the east is pulling the survivors further apart.

Poland, the biggest of the ex-communist eastern states to join after the Cold War, has picked a fight over the fairly minor matter of who chairs EU summits. Symptomatic of a mounting east-west friction, the spat will overshadow a meeting this week that was meant to forge post-Brexit unity.

Brexit has not created that friction but made it worse, as leaders struggle to quell popular disaffection with the EU that is by no means confined to Britain. Westerners are talking up faster integration, even if that means leaving nationalistic easterners behind in a "multispeed Europe".

When Chancellor Angela Merkel, raised in East Germany and a key defender of eastern allies, joined her French, Italian and Spanish peers at Versailles on Monday to ram home a message that unless some states press ahead the EU will stall and break, Polish ruling party leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski hit right back.

"The decisions made in ... Versailles ... aim to reinforce the process of European Union disintegration which has started with Brexit," he said on Tuesday.

Kaczynski will not be in Brussels for Thursday's summit but his prime minister, Beata Szydlo, will give voice to his refusal to endorse the reappointment of her centrist predecessor Donald Tusk as European Council president. Tusk and the right-wing Kaczynski are old and bitter rivals in Polish politics.

BREXIT HOLE

Brexit deprives the easterners, unwilling to see diktat from Brussels or Berlin replace rule from Moscow, of their strongest ally against EU centralization and euro zone domination.

It also leaves a big hole in the EU budget for paying the subsidies that fund a large slice of public spending in the east -- cash that has kept voters there sold on EU membership and which Brussels fears London may now use to court eastern favor and divide the EU to extract better Brexit terms.

On Friday, leaders will work on plans for a March 25 summit in Rome where they hope to use 60th anniversary celebrations of the bloc's founding treaty to pledge a new unity after Brexit.

Yet the road to Rome has been marked with division over the push by founding powers and the EU executive led by Jean-Claude Juncker for more differentiated EU integration.

"The key message of Rome must be the unity of the 27," said a senior EU official involved in looking for compromises to ease the friction. "The political context of Brexit should not be a multispeed Europe. That would be completely out of tune."

Neither side is pushing for a split and all insist they must pull together against challenges from Russia and uncertainty about U.S. support under President Donald Trump. For that reason, officials say, the words to come out of the Brussels and Rome summits will stress unity and soft-pedal the differences.

FRICTION GROWING

But east-west friction has heated up in the past two years.

There are rows over eastern reluctance to take in Syrian refugees and Kaczynski's new policies that Brussels calls undemocratic. New border controls to curb migrants inside the passport-free Schengen zone have fueled eastern fears of losing travel freedoms cherished since the fall of the Berlin Wall.

And there is a brewing crisis over what eastern leaders see as hypocritical protectionism inside the EU single market by western governments trying to impose their own national minimum wages on enterprising -- and cheap -- eastern "posted workers", who offer services like trucking and construction in the west.

Last week Poland and its allies demanded Brussels crack down on the "double standards" of firms that offer lower quality versions of western food brands in eastern markets.

It is not just outspoken Poland and Hungary who fret at fragmentation. The worry runs from the Baltic to the Black Sea. Eastern diplomats fear a new gap could open up along the old Iron Curtain that may never close, especially if the rich states play up to voters and refuse to fill the EU's Brexit budget gap.

Prime Minister Robert Fico told Slovakia's parliament on Wednesday he was skeptical of the Union's future once Britain leaves in 2019.

"I'm afraid the EU will be divided by the money issue after 2020...In the spirit of Trump's 'America first', we can expect to hear 'Germany first', 'France first' etc."

Noting that current EU arrangements already allow for states to deepen their cooperation -- the euro is just one of many examples -- a senior diplomat from an eastern member state said he was suspicious of assurances from Merkel and others that any new moves would always be open to any member state to join.

"The only new thing they can mean is that this has changed," he said. "They are saying 'No, you are not welcome any more'.

"This is very dangerous."

(Additional reporting by Lidia Kelly and Justyna Pawlak in Warsaw and Tatiana Jancarikova in Bratislava; Editing by Gareth Jones)

PARIS Centrist Emmanuel Macron saw his position as favorite to win France's presidential election boosted on Thursday in two polls, with one showing him ahead of far-right leader Marine Le Pen in the first round of the two-stage contest.

BRUSSELS A Belgian railway accident that killed one person last month was the result of the train traveling at more than double the speed limit, prosecutors said on Thursday.

ZURICH Neutral Switzerland risks getting swept up in Turkey's political row with European countries as Swiss authorities weigh how to handle Turks' requests for asylum and a call to ban a rally on Sunday by Turkey's foreign minister.

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EU tries to contain East-West schism as Brexit bites - Reuters

PESHAWAR, PAKISTAN

Pakistan has indefinitely closed two border crossings with Afghanistan after opening them for two days to let through Afghans with visas, officials said on Thursday.

The official border crossings were abruptly ordered closed last month after a series of attacks Pakistan blames on militants sheltered in Afghanistan, heightening tension between the neighbors.

But Pakistan temporarily reopened the crossings on Tuesday and Wednesday this week, to allow the return home of stranded citizens of both countries holding valid travel documents.

Two men, a woman and a child were trampled to death in the resulting surge of more than 20,000 Afghans passing through the crossings, said Attahullah Khogyani, the government spokesman for Afghanistan's border province of Nangarhar.

Pakistani official Niaz Mohammad, based in the border town of Torkham, said 24,000 Afghans had returned to Afghanistan on foot, while 700 Pakistanis returned home, before the border was closed again at 9.30 p.m. on Wednesday.

"There is no clarity on when the border will be reopened," Mohammad said.

The closure chokes off a key trading route for landlocked Afghanistan, although it has been working to build trade ties with other neighbors, such as Iran. It also cuts off Pakistani traders from a steady market.

On Thursday, about 200 traders and transporters held a protest at Torkham, complaining that cargo on 800 stranded trucks was rotting, particularly meat and fruit.

"People have suffered billions of rupees of losses in the past three or four weeks," said one protester, Ali Jan, a transporter.

"Their loaded vehicles have been standing by the road and there is no indication when the border will be opened."

A Pakistani government official, who asked not to be named, said the border would stay closed until Afghanistan took action against a list of 76 "most-wanted terrorists" whose capture and handover by Kabul the Pakistani military demanded last month.

Relations between the two countries are tense, with each routinely accusing the other of doing too little to stop Taliban fighters and other militants from operating in its territory.

Pakistan has blamed several attacks last month, in which more than 130 people were killed, on Pakistani militants taking shelter in Afghanistan. Afghanistan denies the charges.

Last year, Pakistan started building a barrier at Torkham, angering Afghanistan, which rejects a colonial-era boundary line dating from 1893.

The rest is here:
Pakistan Indefinitely Closes Border with Afghanistan Amid Rising Tension - Voice of America

New York Times

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Afghanistan: IS gunmen dressed as medics kill 30 at Kabul military hospital - BBC News