|
|
| |
French rise above US
barbs
By Julio Godoy
 PARIS - France is facing US
economic, military and diplomatic sanctions as
punishment for its opposition to the war in Iraq,
according to official sources.
The US government
has downgraded its participation at Salon de
l'Aeronautique, the French air show next month, and the
US government has also excluded France, officially its
North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) ally, from
military exercises later this year.
French
military representatives have been barred from meetings
in California on links between Galileo, the European
satellite program, and the Global Positioning System,
which is the US military scheme of satellite
identification, and which also serves NATO.
These measures were decided late last month as a
part of a campaign to punish France for its opposition
to the US war against Iraq, officials say. "This
anti-French campaign includes a disinformation campaign
in which anonymous government officials in Washington
spread lies about France," an official told Inter Press
Service.
French Ambassador in Washington
Jean-David Levitte denounced this disinformation
campaign in a letter to US President George W Bush.
Levitte accused publications such as the New York Times,
Newsweek and the Washington Post of joining the
campaign.
"I would like to invite your attention
to the disturbing, unacceptable nature of this
disinformation campaign, whose aim is to hurt France's
image and to deceive the public," Levitte said.
Instances include false claims that France gave former
Iraqi officials diplomatic passports, and that it had
recently delivered components for chemical weapons to
Saddam Hussein's regime.
The official campaign
in the United States is being mirrored by a new business
war. US companies such as Boeing and the oil giant Exxon
have launched a drive to push French competitors out of
the market. Exxon and Boeing recently won contracts in
Qatar that had been sought also by their European rivals
Total and Airbus. The US universities Princeton and
Cornell have won contracts to develop university
campuses in the Qatari capital Doha against French
competition.
French President Jacques Chirac
sought to counter US influence at a meeting with the
emir of Qatar, Sheikh Hamad Ben Khalifa al-Thani, in
Paris this month. Chirac's meeting with the Arab leader
followed a visit to Qatar by the French state secretary
for small and medium-sized enterprises, Renaud Dutreil,
in early May. Dutreil was accompanied by representatives
of leading French enterprises operating in the Middle
East.
Claude de Kemoularia, former French
ambassador to Qatar, said in an interview with the
newspaper Le Monde that "the governments of the region
have sympathy for the French diplomatic position, but
they recognize that France has no real power to put its
position through".
French misgivings rose after
the recent tour of US Secretary of State Colin Powell to
the Middle East, Russia and Germany. Powell did not
visit Paris. Powell's visit to Germany particularly
annoyed France. Germany, too, opposed the Anglo-US war,
but Powell obtained partial support in Berlin last week
for the US proposal to end United Nations sanctions
against Iraq. Germany, France and Russia had wanted
sanctions suspended, not lifted, arguing that a UN
evaluation of Iraqi disarmament is needed before a
decision is made.
Nevertheless, on Wednesday,
France, Germany and Russia decided to back the latest
draft of a US-proposed resolution lifting UN sanctions
on Iraq, French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin
said. "Even if this text does not go as far as we would
like, we have decided to vote for this resolution. This
is because we have chosen the path of unity of the
international community," Villepin said at a joint news
conference with German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer
and Russian counterpart Igor Ivanov.
So maybe
now the French will be back in favor in the United
States.
(Inter Press Service)
|
| |
|
|
 |
|
| |
|
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
