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France on the fence
By
Joel Blocker
PARIS - The French government has
said repeatedly over the past several weeks that it will
not join any United States-led military coalition
against Iraq unless the United Nations Security Council
explicitly finds Baghdad in violation of a key
resolution it passed in November.
Resolution
1441 called on Iraq to reveal all of its weapons of mass
destruction - chemical and biological, as well as
nuclear weapons - to a team of UN inspectors now on its
soil and warned that any omissions or false statements
would have serious consequences.
While the US
has repeatedly warned that it may take unilateral
military action, France - together with other Western
European countries, including in recent days, Britain -
has urged that UN inspectors be given sufficient time to
complete their work before any military retaliation is
undertaken. France and other Western European countries
also have pleaded that war against Iraq should be
considered a last resort after all diplomatic efforts
have failed.
French President Jacques Chirac
repeated that sentiment after talks with German
Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, saying that a political
solution to the Iraq crisis should be exhaustively
pursued. French Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin,
meanwhile, told parliament that his government's
opposition to war had not changed.
Jacques
Beltran is an analyst of transatlantic relations at the
French Institute for International Research, known as
IFRI. He described the differences between the US and
French positions as fundamental. "France's position has
been rather consistent over the past several months. It
holds that recourse to force is not excluded but that it
must be the last possible solution. Above all, it must
be a decision made by the Security Council and not in a
unilateral, bilateral or trilateral manner, but the
result of a negotiation process within the council
itself. Today, we are not certain the Americans consider
war as the last possible option," Beltran said.
Recent weeks have seen a slight narrowing of
differences between France and the US - both permanent
members of the Security Council. Chirac urged France's
military commanders last week to be ready for all
eventualities, while the US sent out some signals of
greater flexibility. "I agree that there has been a
change in the tone of American [official discourse on
Iraq]. When the [US] president and vice president
indicated that voluntary disarmament by Iraq would
constitute a change of regime in itself, that opened the
door. If Iraq accepts disarmament, then there will not
be the need for war. [As for Chirac's remarks to his
military,] there was nothing unusual about the president
telling his military to be ready. But if you listen
carefully to what he said, we have to monitor Iraq's
application of [UN] Resolution 1441. There's nothing
different there from what he had said before: that force
is not excluded, but it has to be the last option and an
option decided by the Security Council," Beltran said.
Beltran also underlined what he considers to be
the growing convergence of Western European views on how
to deal with Iraq. He pointed, notably, to Britain's
calls for what Prime Minister Tony Blair last week
described as more "space and time" for the UN inspectors
to complete their work in Iraq. And he noted, as have
others, public opinion polls that show that three out of
four French citizens are against military intervention
in Iraq. There is growing public opposition to a war
with Iraq in Britain, as well, particularly among
Blair's Labour Party adherents.
Another
Paris-based analyst, Bruno Tertrais of the Foundation
for Strategic Research, also sees great differences
between the US and French positions on Iraq. "There is
clearly a divergence now, even more clearly than in the
past six months, between France on the one side and the
UK and the US on the other. The United Kingdom has sent,
is sending, a very significant contingent of military
forces, while France has not decided to do so ... My
feeling is that President Chirac considers now that war
is inevitable. He probably thought two or three months
ago that war could still be avoided. He believes that
the United States will decide to go to war over Iraq
more or less irrespective of the actual findings of the
UN [inspectors] and the IAEA [International Atomic
Energy Agency]," Tertrais said.
However,
Tertrais continued, France does not exclude
participation in a future war. He noted that, in his
remarks last week, Chirac again made French
participation in a military action contingent on its
being sanctioned by the UN. "I think that the minimum
for France would be some kind of UN presidency statement
or an officially agreed [statement of sanctions by the
five permanent Security Council members,] interpreting
existing resolutions. I don't think that the requirement
of a [second] specific resolution is as strong as French
authorities would like us to believe. But I do think,
however, that, even though, perhaps, there would not be
a second [UN] resolution, at least there would be some
form of explicit UN authorization," Tertrais said.
Both Beltram and Tertrais agreed that, even if
basic French and US positions on Iraq remain far apart,
there have been some smaller convergences of views in
recent weeks. They say that could point to broader
agreement in the near future.
Copyright (c)
2003, RFE/RL Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio
Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave NW, Washington DC
20036
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