|
|
 |
JB Russell/Panos for TIME
MAIN MAN: For better or worse, Chirac's stance has thrust him into the center of global debate
|
|
 |
|
The French Resistance |
 |
|
Jacques Chirac says non to U.S. plans for a war to disarm Iraq. Does the French President really want to give peace a chance, or just recapture the glory that was France?
|
|
|
By JAMES GRAFF |
|
 |
Jacques Chirac isn't looking for a ladder to climb down from his opposition to a military intervention in Iraq. In fact, he's offering George W. Bush a ladder to climb down from the brink of conflict. "If they were to ask me for my friendly advice, I would counsel against [war]," the French President said during an interview with TIME Saturday at his office in the Elysée Palace. If the reinforced inspection regime Chirac has proposed is taken up, and if — against experience and widespread expectation — it proves effective in disarming Saddam Hussein, Bush could claim a double victory: "Mr. Bush can say two things. First, 'Thanks to my intervention, the goal was obtained; it was our 150,000 soldiers who assured that Iraq has been disarmed,' and second, 'I achieved that without spilling any blood.' In the life of a statesman, that counts — no blood spilled."
Chirac's unsolicited counsel may smack of French pride, or just plain grandstanding, but he speaks with real weight. Chirac deliberately reappointed his gilded office at the Elysée Palace with the desk and furnishings first installed by his political mentor, General Charles de Gaulle, the embodiment of French grandeur. Like de Gaulle, Chirac is determined to put France back on the map in international affairs. And outside in the streets of Paris, as in dozens of other cities throughout the world, hundreds of thousands of demonstrators loudly affirmed their agreement with the French leader's contention that "The first consequence of war is death." A poll in last week's New York Times suggests that even a majority of Americans think the inspectors should be given more time.
Chirac is taking the lead against an imminent U.S. invasion of Iraq, but at formidable cost. What once might have seemed a cordial difference of approach, neatly finessed last fall in Security Council Resolution 1441, has become a nasty diplomatic rift that is already poisoning French-American relations and threatening to destroy the U.N., NATO and the credibility of the European Union. By leading an alliance against the war with Germany and, for now at least, Russia, Chirac is giving President Bush fits. "The transatlantic mood has been rubbed so raw that now we have electrodes attached to each other's private bits, and people on both sides are throwing big electric switches every day," says a senior American diplomat in Europe.
Why is the 70-year-old Chirac, whose career until now has been marked more by political glad-handing than steadfast principles, giving America such a jolt? Is it mere vanity, a desire to reclaim for France some of its lost glory? Is it all about oil, a motive many impute to President Bush but which could equally apply to France's lucrative Iraqi ties? Or does Chirac really have a better plan for dealing with Saddam? There's no doubt that Chirac's opposition is sustained by a deeply held conviction that the consequences of a war to dislodge Saddam Hussein would be far worse than any potential benefit. "Chirac thinks he understands the Middle East very well," says one Western diplomat in Paris, "and truly believes that military action will have a destabilizing effect on the region." Chirac may turn out to be the last bulwark of sanity or a tiresome whiner, but either way he's the indispensable man right now in the opposition to an attack on Iraq.
Friday's report to the Security Council from chief U.N. arms inspector Hans Blix and director of the International Atomic Energy Agency Mohamed ElBaradei could have been a key opportunity for France to get back in line. But it did no such thing. Instead, Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin made an impassioned plea to give inspections more time: "No one can say today that the path of war would be shorter than the path of inspections. No one can claim either that it might lead to a safer, more just and more stable world. For war is always the penalty of failure." After de Villepin finished, the chamber erupted into spontaneous applause, a rarity at the U.N.
Blix's report, in fact, offered a mixture of mild censure and faint praise for Iraq; de Villepin's ears were clearly tuned to the latter. "In no case have we seen convincing evidence that the Iraqi side knew in advance that the inspectors were coming," Blix said, sidestepping Washington's central contention that the whole affair is a charade. Many of Chirac's powerful allies were equally disposed to accentuate the positive.
 |
 |
|
|
L A T I N A M E R I C A
The Next Terror Nexus?: Colombian leaders fear the I.R.A. and ETA may be using the country as a base for weapons testing and training
M U S I C
The Brits Are Alright: U.K. pop gets a life after export
|
E N V I R O N M E N T
Coming Unstuck: London's controversial experiment with congestion charging could lead the way for other cities plagued by the tyranny of traffic
B U S I N E S S
More Hang-Ups: From health to privacy, a fear of mobile phones |
|
|
 |
|
