Overwhelmed with relief, they embrace, cheer, weep, bow down in prayer or sit in shaken silence.

Faced with a country whose leader is bent on acquiring nuclear weapons, the EU s leaders are simply dithering, fearing that the fire next door in Iraq could somehow spread.

PRAGUE Every year, it seems, starts with the return of a noxious tradition the annual dispute between Russia and Ukraine over energy, a dispute that left millions of Europeans shivering last winter.