PARIS France has embarked on a two-track strategy to adjust to the harsh reality that it will have to pay a steep price for opposing the war against Iraq, French officials and analysts say.
The severity of the long-term damage is only beginning to be grasped. Senior French officials visiting Washington on non-Iraq issues in recent weeks said they were stunned when their American counterparts informed them of official "resentment and anger" against France, an official said. A French official was told bluntly by a White House official, "I have instructions to tell you that our relations have been degraded."
Secretary of State Colin Powell made that crystal clear in a television interview Tuesday night when he said that France would suffer the consequences of its opposition to the American-led war. That followed a senior White House meeting Monday devoted to finding ways to punish France diplomatically, including the possibility of sidelining it in NATO decision-making and downgrading its status at international conferences.
The French response is being implemented in fits and starts and in contradictory directions. It reflects both an acknowledgment of the need to be conciliatory in the face of threats of punishment from Washington and a fierce determination to maintain an active foreign policy that asserts France's independence but is certain to rankle Washington even more.
"Pragmatic" is the word used most often by officials at the Elysee Palace to describe the new policy of President Jacques Chirac. Officials said he used the word himself when he telephoned President George W. Bush after eight weeks of noncommunication to tell him of France's willingness to "act in a pragmatic way" on Iraq's reconstruction.
It was pragmatism that led France to agree unexpectedly to a temporary suspension of United Nations-imposed economic sanctions against Iraq on Tuesday, apparently without consulting Russia. It also was pragmatism that prompted senior French officials this week to begin speaking about France's "openness" to a possible peacekeeping and reconstruction role for NATO in Iraq, an idea that they said was floated by Chirac when he spoke to Bush.
Chirac has been roundly criticized by editorialists, political analysts and even members of his own inner circle and party for not understanding the consequences of France's firm opposition to the American-led war in Iraq.
In a meeting with journalists in Paris earlier this week, Robert Bradtke, deputy assistant secretary of state for European affairs, said that cooperation on long-standing issues involving military and law-enforcement and intelligence sharing could suffer.
"Can that cooperation be sustained if we have these other disputes?" he asked.
Chirac enjoys a 65 percent approval rating in the polls, down 10 points from last month but still a comfortable margin. So his pragmatism extends only so far. There is neither contrition nor guilt that the French took such a strong anti-war position.
"We haven't changed our analysis that the war wasn't necessary," said a senior French official. "We don't feel guilty. But now is a different time."
Another senior official put it more starkly. "It's a very serious, long term crisis," he said. "The message from Washington is, 'You go to Canossa or you are banished to the darkness outside,'" a reference to the site of Italian castle where Emperor Henry IV did penance to persuade Pope Gregory VII to lift the excommunication against him. France, however, is not in the mood for penance.
Chirac must move to assuage the fears of French executives of potential grass-roots retaliation against France's economy, which even without the war was mired in a recession.
A cartoon in the latest issue of the satirical weekly Le Canard Enchaine showed Chirac facing a group of angry businessmen holding a placard that read, "Our markets!" Chirac tells them, "I promise you, the next war, we'll do it!"
His government, meanwhile, is struggling in the face of opposition by both unions and some employers to an important reform of the country's expensive pension system that would cut the benefits of public sector employees. Chirac is now spending much more time - but still only about 50 percent - on domestic issues, his aides say.
On April 15, Ernest-Antoine Seilliere, the head of the French employers' Federation known as Medef, took the highly unusual step of moving into the realm of foreign policy, appealing to American businessmen to refrain from boycotting French companies.
"We must say to those who are unhappy with the French diplomatic position that they are perfectly free to criticize," he said. "But they must keep the goods and services of our businesses out of this quarrel."
He warned, "Any sort of boycott makes no sense when we are agreed on the way the world and the markets are moving."
Chirac has repeatedly played down the potential economic damage to French interests as a result of its anti-war stance, maintaining that formal sanctions are impossible without violating World Trade Organization regulations. He also has insisted that anti-French sentiment in the United States is a passing phenomenon and spoke of his love for the United States.
But the French president will continue to adhere to positions that seem to guarantee confrontation with Washington. His aides say that France will not agree to the permanent lifting of sanctions against Iraq, just to a temporary "suspension" of perhaps two or three months until Iraq can be declared free of its weapons of mass destruction. The Bush administration demands the total lifting of sanctions.
France will also press for the return of some sort of international weapons inspection regime under the authority of the United Nations, an idea that Washington has already rejected.
Meanwhile, in other parts of the world, France remains determined to carve out a foreign policy independent of the United States. Since the war began, Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin has traveled extensively, including a three-day sprint through Egypt, Syria, Lebanon and Saudi Arabia during which he argued that the "road map" for Middle East peace agreed on by the European Union, the United Nations, the United States and Russia should be published quickly, and followed up by an international conference in Paris
After visits to Turkey and Jordan earlier this week, he made a hastily-scheduled visit to Iran on Thursday. In contrast to Washington's branding of Iran as part of an "axis of evil" because of what it calls its support for terrorism and its nuclear weapons program, Villepin was there to engage, not attack.
He said that he "welcomed" what he called "marked progress" on human rights and called on Iran to "continue confidence-building measures" on its nuclear program including the acceptance of stricter international inspections of its facilities.
Iran's foreign minister, Kamal Kharazi, said that Iraq, the Israeli-Palestinian war and Afghanistan were also discussed, adding, "Such discussion, in the currently sensitive climate, are very important and highlight a new track in the relations between Iran and France."
The French Foreign Ministry kept the trip to Iran secret until Villepin had already left Paris. Foreign Ministry officials insisted that the trip was unrelated to the war in Iraq.
But the trip is certain to be interpreted in Washington as French interference in the region, particularly when Washington |
