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PA
UNDER STRESS:
Blair with Foreign Secretary Jack Straw
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Blair's U.N. resolution co-sponsor, Spanish Prime Minister José María Aznar, also stood firm in his support for action when he visited French President Jacques Chirac in Paris last week — even though polls show Spanish opposition to a war running at 85%. Aznar will rely on the strong discipline of his Popular Party (PP) to fend off an opposition motion to be offered this week against his pro-American stance. "We are serenely concerned but very tranquil, because we are convinced that the best policy is the one of honor and truth," Aznar said last week. His serenity and tranquillity may be sorely tested. His party is losing support to the rival Socialists and his position infuriates even some traditional allies. Says Guillerme Vázquez, spokesman for Galician Nationalist Block: "The government doesn't give a damn what the people think."
While Blair and Aznar hang tough, Washington's other chief Western European ally, Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, is looking a little rattled. With 88% of Italians opposed to a war without U.N. backing, Berlusconi is waffling about his once forthright support for Bush. "Military action by one country outside the United Nations would be so harmful that I don't think anyone will shoulder such a serious responsibility," he said at a press conference in Rome last Friday.
Berlusconi's shift might have been influenced by the world's best-known peace activist, Pope John Paul II. The Vatican has become something of a revolving door for politicians seeking religious counsel or political cover from the Pontiff: over the past few weeks Blair, Aznar, Kofi Annan and Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz have all dropped by. The Pope has called this Wednesday a day of fasting and prayer for peace, and this week he will dispatch Pio Cardinal Laghi, a former papal nuncio to the U.S., to Washington to meet with Bush. The Vatican's Foreign Minister, Archbishop Jean-Louis Tauran, said last week that "a unilateral war of aggression would constitute a crime against peace and against the Geneva Convention."
That line isn't far from Chirac's. Like Blair, Chirac also faced a debate last week, but the one that took place in the French National Assembly was of an entirely different nature than in the British House of Commons. In France, opposition to war holds firm among more than three-quarters of the population. When Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin said that the second Security Council resolution introduced by the U.S., the U.K, and Spain "has no justification today," he reaped sage nods from throughout the house.
It's one thing to preach happily to the converted, but the real issue is how far Chirac will go in trying to block the U.S. effort. Socialist leader François Hollande had a clear answer: "France must go, if need be, to the end: to the use of its veto ... the means to refuse legal cover to an illegitimate intervention." For months, polls have shown that the French public would like to see the country use its veto. But many on the right pointed out that a veto could have dire consequences for France. As independent as France is, they contend, it is in more natural company alongside the U.K. and the U.S. than China and Russia. A veto would risk making the current rupture with the U. S. permanent, and that could cripple France's economic and geopolitical interests.
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