First Stop, Iraq

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It didn't turn out that way, and perhaps it never could. Resolution 1441, like so many other diplomatic texts, turned out to have enough ambiguities in it to mean all things to all men. The French insist that they understood the resolution allowed some time for inspections to work. "Maybe six months, maybe 12, maybe 18," says a top aide to French President Jacques Chirac. By December, Paris was starting to panic. The Americans, says the aide to Chirac, were saying, "We're putting Saddam to a test that he's certain to fail. In a few weeks, we'll have a green light for a military attack." Every time Saddam did something--accept the weapons inspectors back, provide a report on his WMD--the French saw it as proof that inspections were working. The Americans, by contrast, saw it as continued Iraqi obstruction. "Each time there was progress," says a French official, "instead of demanding more, Bush portrayed it as deception and trickery." The real problem, says this official, is that Saddam was canny enough not to make "one big mistake"--a stiffing of the inspectors so egregious that even those most opposed to war would be forced to concede that the time for diplomacy was over.

As late as January, the Administration was convinced that France would come around. "This is what the French do," said a senior U.S. official. "They resist, and then when the time comes, they move to the head of the parade." The Administration missed what was happening in Europe. In the summer, to save his skin in federal elections, German Chancellor Gerhard Schroder came out against military action in Iraq under any circumstances. He and Chirac had long had chilly relations, but last fall the French and German governments began to work toward a set of common positions on a variety of issues. For the French, this was vital. With Germany set to take a seat on the Security Council in January, Paris would no longer be facing the Americans alone. On Jan. 14, at a meeting to prepare for the 40th anniversary of a treaty of friendship between the two nations, Chirac said France's position on the need to continue with inspections was "identical" to Germany's.

Six days later, on Martin Luther King Day, Powell--at de Villepin's request--attended a Security Council session that was to debate terrorism. The meeting was relatively uneventful, though Joschka Fischer, Germany's Foreign Minister, said a military strike against Iraq would make fighting terrorism more difficult. But at the press conference afterward, de Villepin dropped his bomb. France, he said, thought that "nothing justifies envisaging military action." It was the plainest signal possible that so long as the inspectors were getting cooperation from Saddam, Paris would not support a war.