No French troops will deploy to Iraq, ambassador says
04/23/04
cleveland.com
Scott Hiaasen
Plain Dealer Reporter
The French government will not commit military troops to Iraq not even under the banner of the United Nations but France does share with the United States the hope of a peaceful, stable future for Iraq, French Ambassador Jean-David Levitte said Thursday.
Levitte, ambassador to the United States, told an audience at the Cleveland Council on World Affairs that the outcome of the U.S.-led occupation of Iraq will determine the future of "relations between the Muslim world and the West" and that U.S. efforts to rebuild that country "cannot fail."
"What is at stake in Iraq is huge," he said. "We want to help. We will help."
The French government which opposed the Iraq war before the U.S. invasion began in March 2003 is willing to help train an Iraqi security force after the U.S. transfers sovereignty to an Iraqi interim government as planned on June 30, Levitte told the crowd of more than 200 people.
But in a separate interview, Levitte said the French would not send military troops to Iraq, even if the United States eventually cedes security responsibilities to the United Nations. Levitte, 57, was France's envoy to the United Nations from 2000 to 2002, and he served as president of the U.N. Security Council.
"We don't consider that to send more troops is the solution," Levitte said.
The Pentagon recently stalled the return of some 20,000 U.S. soldiers in Iraq, and military planners are considering deploying more.
Levitte came to Cleveland as part of a yearlong national tour to promote cooperation between France and the United States. He has spoken to civic groups, colle giate audi ences and ed itorial boards from Los An geles to West Palm Beach, Fla.
He said France has been one of America's strongest allies in the fight against terrorism "this disease of the 21st century" noting that France still has troops in Afghanistan and that French Special Forces are helping to hunt for Osama bin Laden in the mountains near the Pakistan border.
"The bitter past should be put aside," he said. "We are together in this war on terror."
Levitte said his country was not entirely opposed to a war with Iraq, as U.S. officials believed, but his government wanted first to wait for the findings of U.N. inspectors looking for weapons of mass destruction.
And the French, remembering their bloody colonial experience in Algeria in the 1950s and early '60s, were wary of a long- term occupation of Iraq.
Levitte said he first became certain of the Bush administration's decision to go to war in a meeting with national security adviser Condoleezza Rice on Jan. 13, 2003 weeks before a failed attempt by the United States and Britain to get the U.N. to back a war resolution.
In the meeting, first described in the current issue of Vanity Fair magazine, Rice dismissed every warning Levitte and a colleague raised about the potential problems of a U.S. occupation.
"We reached the conclusion that, My Gosh! The debate is over,' " Levitte said. |
