Austria, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Denmark, France, Estonia, Finland, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden as well as the European Union were to formally notify UNESCO Monday of their ratification, a ministry spokesman said.

"This will take us beyond the threshold of 30 ratifications needed for the convention to come into effect," he said, adding that the text would formally take effect three months later on March 18 next year.

Championed by France and Canada, the convention affirms the sovereign right of nations to "protect and promote the diversity of cultural expressions."

It was approved last year by 148 of 154 members of the United Nations educational, scientific and cultural organisation. Only the US and Israel voted against, while four countries abstained.

Supporters say the convention will help countries protect themselves in particular from English-speaking cultural standardisation. But Washington argued that it is a pretext for putting up trade barriers and blocking the free flow of information.

Almost 99 percent of the voters on the Crimean peninsula were negative on the proposal defended by President Victor Yushenko, to the detriment of traditional links with Russia.

Serguei Tolstoy, director of the International Research and Analysis Institute of the Ukrainian Sciences Academy, pointed out the referendum only took place in Crimea because a national initiative was not permitted by authorities, despite 4.6 million signatures petitioning it, as it is not considered advantageous for the Regions party.

Suprema Rada (Parliament) deputy Efim Fiks added his voice to the debate on Channel NTN, stating that actions similar to the petitioning will take place in other regions of the country, making Ukraine an anti-NATO bastion, he asserted.

Legislator and president of the Social Council for Defense of Constitutional Rights, Leonid Grach stressed that the only way to stop the run toward the alliance is a national plebiscite and a national mobilization.

It said Mr Blair was now paying the price for setting too much store by his relationship with Mr Bush and warned that his successor would have to strike a new foreign policy balance between Europe and the US.

"The post-9/11 decision to invade Iraq was a terrible mistake and the current debacle will have policy repercussions for many years to come," the paper said.

"The root failure of Tony Blair's foreign policy has been its inability to influence the Bush administration in any significant way despite the sacrifice - military, political and financial - that the United Kingdom has made.

"Tony Blair has learnt the hard way that loyalty in international politics counts for very little."

The paper, written by outgoing Chatham House director Victor Bulmer-Thomas, said Mr Blair's first term as Prime Minister had been a "qualified success" - demonstrating Britain's European credentials while forging a close working relationship with US president Bill Clinton.

However his response to the 9/11 attacks in 2001 and decision to back Mr Bush over the invasion of Iraq marked a "watershed" in British foreign policy.

"This was without a shadow of doubt the defining moment of Blair's foreign policy - indeed, the defining moment of his whole premiership. It will shape his legacy - for better or for worse - for many years to come," the paper said.

In the absence of support in the United Nations for a humanitarian intervention in Iraq, the paper said it had been a "terrible mistake" to rely on Saddam Hussain's weapons of mass destruction (WMD) as a justification for war.

It said "the jury is still out" on the extent to which Mr Blair knew that the claims about Iraqi WMD were "overblown or even fabricated".

However, by the time of the invasion, it was clear Britain was not sure of its case, the diplomatic options had not been exhausted, and the UK national interest was truly engaged.

"Under these circumstances, the only thing that could have rescued Tony Blair was a swift and successful establishment of a democratic government in Iraq, and that did not happen," the paper said.

It dismissed Mr Blair's claims that unwavering support for the US in public would bring influence in private, accusing the Prime Minister of over-estimating his political capital in Washington.

"The bilateral relationship with the United States may be 'special' to Britain, but the US has never described it as more than 'close'," it said.

"The best that could be hoped for is that Britain would ally itself with one of the Washington factions that ultimately prevailed in the internecine struggle for presidential support."

The paper said Mr Blair's successor would not be able to make the same mistake, and would instead have to develop a closer relationship with Europe.

"For the foreseeable future, whoever is Prime Minister, there will no longer be unconditional support for US initiatives in foreign policy," it said.

Elsewhere it said it was "unforgivable" that Mr Blair had failed to foresee the consequences of a Taliban resurgence in Afghanistan, given the impact on heroin use on Britain's streets.

In contrast, it said his most positive legacy in foreign affairs would be his determined advocacy of the need to tackle climate change.

"While it is easy to criticise the gap between his rhetoric and Government actions at home in mitigating climate change, there is no doubt that Blair's powers of persuasion have been very effective in pushing this issue up the international agenda," it said.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents said Monday they seized seven birds from two men as they re-entered the United States from Canada via Buffalo's Peace Bridge.

John Beale, 59, and Frank Salvini, 65, caught the attention of officers when they said they had gone to Canada Friday not for the usual gambling or theatre excursion, but to buy 11 kilograms of millet bird seed.

The suspicious agents searched the men and found seven undeclared live finches, each worth $50 to $200 in the U.S. market. Four of the birds were in the liner of a coat pocket and the other three were in toilet paper rolls inside a fanny pack, agents said.

The Buffalo-area men each were fined $1,000, CBP spokesman Kevin Corsaro said, and the case was referred to federal wildlife and agricultural officials, who were looking into possible criminal charges.

"The smuggling of such birds increases the chances that a communicable bird disease, such as Exotic Newcastle or avian influenza, could enter the United States," Corsaro said.

"The US Army is considering measures to force striking workers back to their jobs at a Goodyear Tire & Rubber plant in Kansas in the face of a looming shortage of tires for Humvee trucks and other military equipment used in Iraq and Afghanistan," reported the Financial Times on December 15. "A strike involving 17,000 members of the United Steelworkers union has crippled 16 Goodyear plants in the US and Canada since October 5."

This is no small matter, as a similar dispute in the early 1950s provoked one of the most significant constitutional crises of modern times.

In April 1952, when a dispute between the nation's steel companies and the United Steel Workers of America union threatened to disrupt production at more than eighty steel mills, President Harry Truman issued an executive order that the plants be seized.

The President argued that he had the power to do so because the country was engaged in the Korean War, claiming that he acted "by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and the laws of the United States, and as President of the United States and Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces of the United States."

Truman had an expansive view of executive powers during wartime, as was evidenced during his April 17, 1952, press conference, where a reporter asked: "Mr. President, if you can seize the steel mills under your inherent powers, can you, in your opinion, also seize the newspapers and, or, the radio stations?"

"Under similar circumstances," claimed Truman, "the President of the United States has to act for whatever is for the best of the country. That's the answer to your question."

In fact, Truman was wrong on both political and constitutional grounds. As with the current Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts, the Korean fight had been entered into without a declaration of war by Congress--the bloody conflict was described vaguely as a "police action." Even if a declaration of war had been made, there was little reason to believe that Truman had the authority that he said was his. Without such a declaration, there was no question that he was claiming powers that were not his to exercise.

Republican members of Congress, led by Ohioan George Bender, moved to impeach Truman. Bender declared, "I do not believe that our people can tolerate the formation of a presidential precedent which would permit any occupant of the White House to exercise his untrammeled discretion to take over the industry, communications system or other forms of private enterprise in the name of 'emergency.'"

The articles of impeachment against Truman that were submitted by Bender drew national attention, and support from publications such as the Chicago Tribune. As the drive picked up steam--with Illinois Senator Everett McKinley Dirksen telling a national radio audience that Congress had a responsibility to act--the Supreme Court quickly announced that it would take up the matter.

A court consisting of Justices appointed by Truman and his Democratic predecessor, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, forced Truman to back down. The ruling in Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer (1952) explicitly restricted the authority of the President to seize private property in the absence of either specifically enumerated powers under Article Two of the Constitution or statutory authority approved by the Congress.

"The Founders of this Nation entrusted the lawmaking power to the Congress alone in both good and bad times," Justice Hugo Black wrote, on behalf of the court's majority. "It would do no good to recall the historical events, the fears of power and the hopes for freedom that lay behind their choice. Such a review would but confirm our holding that this seizure order cannot stand."

In his brilliant concurrence, Justice Felix Frankfurter wrote, "A constitutional democracy like ours is perhaps the most difficult of man's social arrangements to manage successfully. Our scheme of society is more dependent than any other form of government on knowledge and wisdom and self-discipline for the achievement of its aims. For our democracy implies the reign of reason on the most extensive scale. The Founders of this Nation were not imbued with the modern cynicism that the only thing that history teaches is that it teaches nothing. They acted on the conviction that the experience of man sheds a good deal of light on his nature. It sheds a good deal of light not merely on the need for effective power, if a society is to be at once cohesive and civilized, but also on the need for limitations on the power of governors over the governed. To that end they rested the structure of our central government on the system of checks and balances. For them the doctrine of separation of powers was not mere theory; it was a felt necessity."

Noting the recent struggle against German fascism, Frankfurter argued that the wisdom of the Founders had been confirmed. "Not so long ago it was fashionable to find our system of checks and balances obstructive to effective government. It was easy to ridicule that system as outmoded--too easy," the Justice explained. "The experience through which the world has passed in our own day has made vivid the realization that the Framers of our Constitution were not inexperienced doctrinaires. These long-headed statesmen had no illusion that our people enjoyed biological or psychological or sociological immunities from the hazards of concentrated power.... The accretion of dangerous power does not come in a day. It does come, however slowly, from the generative force of unchecked disregard of the restrictions that fence in even the most disinterested assertion of authority."

Frankfurter's words ring true across history to address the current circumstance, as do those of George Bender and the members of the House whose move to impeach Truman highlighted the need for judicial intervention: "our people [cannot] tolerate the formation of a presidential precedent which would permit any occupant of the White House to exercise his untrammeled discretion to take over the industry, communications system or other forms of private enterprise in the name of 'emergency.'"