Europe's underwhelming response to Egypt's democratic uprising

Almost every day for the last week, Al Jazeera has for a few minutes briefly broken away from its 24-hour coverage of the Egyptian protests whenever US secretary of state Hilary Clinton or President Barack Obama were about to speak on the situation. Not once has the channel turned to Brussels.

European diplomats have argued that it takes time to forge a position because the EU's foreign policy represents a consensus of the 27 member states, and that it has only been a few hours at most ...