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Politics : World Affairs Discussion -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Thomas M. who wrote (2302)	10/10/2002 3:35:07 AM
From: GUSTAVE JAEGER	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 3959

Re: As soon as Elf and Total get a cut of the action, they'll change their tune. Well, I think that the French position on the Iraqi crisis is not that "mundane"... I mean, the French are actually bargaining for much more than oil --partly because nobody seriously expects that the US will scoop the Iraqi oil pool after the so-called regime change. The ties between France and Iraq are too strong --especially when one notices that the French President is none other than Jacques Chirac... Actually, France worries about her international rank, her much cherished grandeur. What the French fear most about the US power politics towards the Middle East is her eventual irrelevance... They don't give a toss about Iraq but they don't want the US and Britain to go alone either. As I once told you, France and her EU associates are not vying for the #1 job (world sheriff), they merely want to be the "indispensable" #2 of any US-led enterprise --be it economic, military, humanitarian,.... The following excerpt sums it up pretty well: France has hinted it might participate in military action against Baghdad, but only if it is approved by the Security Council in the two-step procedure proposed by Chirac. A close ally of Chirac said Bush's Monday night speech showed that France's voice had been heard. Former prime minister Alain Juppe, a key figure in Chirac's conservative party, said: "If I understood what President Bush said correctly, he asserted that military intervention was neither imminent nor inevitable. "He speaks of a coalition, of action with allies, and he recalls that the aim is disarming Iraq...so on these aims I think that French diplomacy has made itself heard," Juppe told RTL radio. Juppe, France's foreign minister from 1993-95, said Bush appeared to be moving away from advocating unilateral action. "I'm not saying it's France calling the shots, but she is being heard, notably in the Security Council," Juppe said. French Foreign Ministry spokesman Francois Rivasseau told reporters in Paris: "Things are coming together. The work is constructive." [...] cnn.com