As American pressure mounts, France has announced a "European front" against the use of force against Iraq, writes David Tresilian in Paris Against a background of growing public opposition in Europe to an American-led war on Iraq, French President Jacques Chirac last week announced a joint Franco-German position designed to resist American pressure to "force" the issue at the United Nations in New York. Following a meeting between the French president and the German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder in Paris, the two leaders announced the formation of a "European front" and a common approach to American and British attempts to secure a UN Security Council resolution approving the use of force against Iraq. "Above all, we want to see Iraq disarmed of weapons of mass destruction and the unconditional return of UN weapons inspectors to the country. [However], we are totally opposed to a resolution allowing the automatic use of force," Chirac said. Schroeder, re-elected in September to a second term as Germany's chancellor on a platform of opposition to German involvement in any military action against Iraq, said that he was happy with the "understanding shown by Jacques Chirac on Iraq" and at French policy on the issue, which was "very close to that of Germany". "Bearing in mind France's position as a permanent member of the UN Security Council," Schroeder said, "the country needs some margin for manoeuvre. On this issue, I have the greatest respect for the role played by France." France, the only European country aside from Britain having a seat among the five permanent members of the UN Security Council, and therefore the right to veto any Council resolution, has repeatedly expressed its reluctance to support an Anglo- American resolution authorising the use of force. Instead, the country favours a two- step approach, presented by President Chirac. Under this plan there would first be a resolution re-authorising the return of the UN weapons inspectors, followed by a second resolution authorising force at some future date should the Iraqi regime impede the inspectors' efforts at investigating Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction programme.Writing in this newspaper last week, French Minister of Foreign Affairs Dominique de Villepin described this two-step approach as making it possible "to maintain the international community's unity, strengthen the legitimacy of the action and satisfy our demand for efficacy". France would not "give a blank cheque for military action", he wrote, refusing "the risk of an intervention which would not take all the demands of collective security fully into account".The French and German leaders' announcement of their countries' common platform came against a background of large demonstrations in London and Rome against an American-led war on Iraq and in favour of a UN-brokered solution to the crisis. Comments in the French press have been almost uniformly hostile to the American approach to the issue, with broad cross-party support going to Chirac's two-resolution approach and stressing the possible regional and international consequences of any American action against Iraq. Le Monde, the most influential French newspaper, has consistently supported the role played by France in the issue, stressing the "common sense" of the French and now joint Franco-German approach, while ridiculing as so much "hot air" statements made by US President George W Bush that in seeking to get the Anglo- American resolution through the Security Council the US is acting with the best interests of the UN in mind, together with those of the international community as a whole. Referring to remarks the US president made in his address to the UN General Assembly on 12 September, the paper commented last week that "the US president has never shown himself so concerned by the future of the UN. In other words, the fact that the United States has never lifted its little finger to ensure the implementation of other Security Council resolutions, which today are dead letters, is not of the smallest importance. The only thing that matters in judging the UN is the application of the resolutions on Iraq." President Bush had told delegates at the UN that the organisation faced "a difficult and defining moment" over Iraq, asking whether Security Council resolutions would be "honoured and enforced, or cast aside without consequence. Will the United Nations serve the purpose of its founding, or will it be irrelevant?" "The Palestinian representative at the UN has reminded us that for the 16 resolutions on Iraq that have not been implemented, or that have not been fully implemented, there are 28 that are being violated daily in the Israeli- Palestinian conflict, from those denouncing the occupation of the Palestinian territories to those forbidding their colonisation," Le Monde said. Earlier, the paper had warned of the possible consequences of any American action against Iraq. Military action against Iraq, Le Monde said in an editorial on 10 September, would lead to the kind of hostility between Europe and the Arab World not seen since the Suez Crisis in 1956. Any "preventive" war against Iraq with the aim of overthrowing the regime of Saddam Hussein would be "to call into question everything that has been built up in terms of international law since 1945 and since the end of the Cold War," the paper said. If Iraq is an aggressor, "as it was in 1990-1991, the international community has the right to act". If Iraq is a threat, then "the international community has the right to contain the threat, but it may not use military force to overthrow a regime that one member of that community does not like." French policy towards the Iraqi regime, like that of other Western countries, has reversed over the past 20 years, going from support to war and condemnation following Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in 1990. France participated in the international coalition formed to force Iraqi forces from Kuwait during the 1991 Gulf War. However, in the 1970s French President Jacques Chirac, then prime minister, described Saddam Hussein, then number two in the regime of Iraqi President Ahmed Al-Bakr, as a "personal friend" and a man he had "esteem and affection" for, following visits by Hussein to France and Chirac to Baghdad, and Iraq as the "friend and ally" of France. In 1975, France sold two nuclear reactors to Iraq, one of which, that at Osirak, was capable of producing plutonium for use in nuclear weapons. In 1981, Israel sent military jets into Iraq and destroyed the French-built reactor. During the 1980s, France was an important source of arms for the Iraqi regime in its war with Iran, believing that a strong Iraq was necessary to contain Iranian power in the region. French Super Etendard aircraft armed with Exocet missiles were used by the Iraqis to destroy the Iranian oil terminal at Kharg island in the Persian Gulf. This history, too, has been widely reported in the French press, with some commentators saying that the way France votes on the Anglo- American UN Security Council resolution on Iraq, and its attitude towards possible American military action in the country, will also be determined by calculations concerning future French oil interests in Iraq.
