Where Paris and Washington Differ
KOMISAR, LUCY
FOREIGN POLICY Where Paris and Washington Differ BY LUCY KOMISAR Paris Americans who find themselves perplexed by French foreign policy may be forgiven. On the one hand, President Francois...
...The Mitterrand government did eventually seek the release of some political prisoners...
...Lately, though, France has been keeping a low profile where Central America is concerned...
...doesn't go far enough in recognizing the rights of the Palestinian people, and the necessity for participation of Palestinians in negotiations...
...Normal relations were not possible, he declared, in the light of the invasion of Afghanistan and the pressure exerted on Poland...
...When Libyan soldiers helped Goukouni take Faya-Largeau, the main northern city, France dispatched 3,000 troops to separate the two forces, also numbering about 3,000 each...
...The French Left's approval of a strong defense posture stems from the country's defeat in World War II...
...To get Nicaragua to adhere to the concepts of democracy, he argues, the West has to draw it closer by " closing our eyes" for the time being to some of the things that are going on there...
...A Foreign Ministry official declared that France considered the stability of Iraq essential for the stability of the region—that it provided a permanent balance between Syria and Egypt...
...In practice, this has meant little more than a limitation of diplomatic contacts and cultural exchanges...
...Officials confirm, for example, that they will not sell Nicaragua any more weapons, but they deny that this reflects a change in their views...
...acknowledges France's primacy in the former French colonies...
...They disagreed with the now abrogated troop withdrawal agreement between Israel and Lebanon signed last May, and argue that Washington has not put enough pressure on Israel to evacuate its forces from southern Lebanon...
...approach...
...In private conversations with journalists, Cheysson says he thinks it is wrong for the U.S...
...Habre took the capital, Ndjamena, in June 1982...
...Last fall, however, Vice PresiLucy Komisar, a free-lance journalist who often writes on European affairs, has recently returned from France...
...policy on Central America...
...The Socialists also disagree with Washington's hostility toward, and isolation of, Cuba...
...It raises some doubts...
...are at odds, too, over the Middle East's third trouble spot, the Persian Gulf, where the Iran-Iraq war rages on...
...But Libya is a nationalistic Arab country, and it's useless to try to isolate it...
...to encircle Nicaragua and give it the feeling of being surrounded by hostile powers...
...Increased human rights efforts are currently under way, albeit quietly and without public statements...
...He did not mention the $6 billion debt Iraq has built up during 10 years of arms purchases...
...Then they add that Syria's ties to Moscow are a good reason for bringing the Soviets into any regional peace settlement...
...For them it points up the essence of Mitterrand's disagreement with what he views as the military-oriented foreign policy of the Reagan Administration...
...He's not going to support these dictators," they could be heard saying...
...Shortly after the Socialists came to power, Mitterrand agreed to sell Nicaragua $20 million worth of arms, and he expanded trade and diplomatic contacts with Cuba...
...dent George Bush caused a stir when he told several reporters at a luncheon here that at some point they would have to be taken into account...
...approach to the Middle East in general, and Lebanon in particular, are far less tentative...
...The French prescription is to tell the Sandinistas that if they want support from the international community, they must open their regime, advance the electoral process to 1984, and establish a multi-party system...
...The Reagan Plan was a positive step, a foreign ministry official commented, noting that it required Arab lands to be given up by Israel in exchange for peace...
...The U.S...
...We had a clear divergence at that moment with the American government...
...Still, he continued, "we think the U.S...
...When Mitterrand took office, Chad was occupied by 10,000 Libyan troops...
...Baghdad needed arms to show Teheran it couldn't win the war, he contended, and that failure to negotiate a settlement of the conflict could result in considerable damage to its oil resources...
...When Mitterrand was elected, there was dancing in the streets in some African countries...
...The issue reached a climax of sorts in the fall when Paris announced the sale of six Super Etendard planes to Iraq, giving it greater capacity to bomb Iranian oil installations...
...Terming the maneuvers in Honduras "a direct intervention aimed at destabilizing the Nicaraguan regime," he said, "we think it's an enormous error, the same error made with Cuba in 1959...
...maneuvers in Honduras...
...In 1982, France issued a declaration with Mexico calling for negotiations between the government of El Salvador and the guerrillas...
...Iran responded that if it suffered damages, it would retaliate, raising fears in Washington of threats to oil tankers and nonbelligerent shipping in the Straits of Hormuz...
...The fighting stopped, and the French are seeking to mediate the dispute, but the Libyans have effectively occupied northern Chad...
...On the other side, he has condemned Israel for its annexation of the Golan Heights, its bombing of the Iraqi nuclear plant, and its invasion of Lebanon...
...In Zaire, 13 deputies went to President Mobutu Sese Seko and asked for the right to form another party...
...Should the Saddam Hussein regime disappear from Baghdad, that sum could be lost...
...IftheU.S...
...The Socialists had criticized the conservatives for backing authoritarian regimes on the Dark Continent...
...Trying to maintain dialogue and economic contact is a more productive attitude to take...
...France and theU.S...
...People are asking if this was a trial balloon for Paris, for Moscow or for the U.S...
...In the Central African Republic, similar events occurred...
...Realism, he conceded, obliged France not to break off relations with all the others that do not have democratic systems...
...On the one hand, President Francois Mitterrand has vigorously endorsed the installation of U.S...
...Rivalry then caused a break between Goukouni and his Defense Minister, Hissein Habre, who went to the Sudan to prepare forces for attack...
...medium-range missiles in Europe to counter the Soviet nuclear threat, and he agreed to participate in the "international peace keeping force" in Lebanon...
...This meant no interference with repression, even though, unlike Giscard, Mitterrand refused to have close relations with Africa's dictators...
...We don't agree with the American view that Nicaragua has become a Marx-ist country manipulated by the Soviet Union through Cuba," Estier said to me...
...Many of the challengers were arrested—in Gabon by former French policemen recruited by the government...
...The major policy change has been the establishment of contacts and the proferring of aid in Leftist African countries such as Mozambique, Congo, Angola, Zimbabwe, and Tanzania...
...missiles on French soil...
...was happy because this countered Soviet influence," observed Hugo Sada...
...Doubts about the U.S...
...The French see their own nuclear force as counterbalancing Soviet conventional strength...
...Together with the Organization of African Unity (OAU), he asked President Goukouni Oueddei to send them home, and 15 months after their arrival, the troops withdrew...
...In Gabon, the opposition soon demanded a multi-party system and free elections...
...And in each place the confidence that Socialist France would not permit the squelching of movements demanding democracy proved unfounded...
...Some elements in Washington wanted France to go to war against Libya to "finish off Qaddafi," Estier says...
...France was selling arms to Iraq for several years, and the U.S...
...France was no longer tilting to the Right, but it was not intervening—there was no more talk of unmaking of governments, or taking the side of one faction over another...
...thinking was that excluding Syria equaled excluding the Soviet Union, but Syria blocked the Reagan Plan...
...Habre secured the support of the United States because, American sources here say, Washington liked his longstanding hostility to Libyan President Muammar Qaddafi...
...Opposition leaders knew him as head of the party they had joined in exile in France...
...A better measure of their Third World policy is its execution in Africa, where the French still have significant power...
...The French saw theU.S...
...Following his election in May 1981, Mitterrand abandoned his conservative predecessor's friendly stance toward Moscow...
...He was the first French head of state to visit Israel, he supports the Camp David accords, and he has forbidden compliance by French companies with the Arab boycott...
...Paris deplores the forays into Nicaragua by U.S.-backed anti-Sandinista forces, and Foreign Minister Claude Cheysson has spoken out against the U.S...
...Officially, Washington backs Paris' rejection of the Kremlin's demand that French and British nuclear weapons be included in the medium-range missile negotiations...
...Of course, it is easy for Mitterrand and company to talk about Central America, where Paris has no interests and little influence...
...Libya needs international help for development...
...Most of them were observers at the Socialist International...
...Perhaps the key to understanding these seeming contradictions is the fact that, despite his traditional Socialist mistrust of the USSR, the French President refuses to see every crisis as part of the East-West confrontation...
...Wewillsee...
...You make it more dangerous...
...We know the Sandinista leaders...
...The party's international secretary, Nicole Bourdillat, said the Socialists believe Cuba "is willing to negotiate and solve the problems of Nicaragua and El Salvador peacefully...
...Rather, they claim, the initiatives taken by the Contadora group—Mexico, Venezuela, Colombia, and Panama—have made it unnecessary for someone outside the region to play a role, and France's capacity to act in the area is limited anyway...
...He wanted to shore up the German government, to support it in the decision to accept deployment...
...Not supporting dictators was a very seductive idea," said Estier, but "how many African countries have governments founded on pluralism and universal elections...
...The French insist that Syria is Syria, not the Soviet Union, and that a solution to the Lebanese mess has to involve Damascus...
...elections," says Hugo Sada, deputy director of the government-sponsored National Higher Institute for Defense and Disarmament Studies...
...Yet where French policy under former President Valery Giscard d'Estaing had tilted toward the Palestinians, Mitterrand has tried to restore a balance...
...France opposed President Ronald Reagan's attempt to internationalize the ban on helping the Russians build their huge gas pipeline, as well as proposals for sanctions after the imposition of martial law in Poland and the repression of its free trade union movement, Solidarity...
...The French insisted that until the Libyans invaded and constituted an internal threat, Paris had no right to intervene in Chad...
...On the other hand, his government has strongly criticized U.S...
...Only one, Senegal...
...Nonetheless, the two have clashed over management of the crisis in Chad, an extremely poor and very arid country just south of Libya...
...officials insist they have the same posi-tionasours...
...usingaminorThirdWorld contretemps to hit at an outside political foe as well, and warned to no avail that the best way to keep the Libyans from gaining influence in Chad was to avoid another civil war...
...It succeeded in the Central African Republic, got one deputy released in Zaire, and had no luck in Gabon...
...We're very much opposed to what Libya is doing in Africa," a high official assured me...
...We know their desire not to become satellites of the Soviet Union...
...One must both defend the existence of Israel, he says, and recognize the right of the Palestinians to a state...
...Previously, support from Paris was limited to conservative states, such as Senegal, the Central African Republic and Zaire...
...special envoy Richard Stone that it was "better to encourage the leaders of Nicaragua not to fall into the arms of the Soviet Union than to create a situation where they have no choice but to seek Soviet aid...
...But Mitterrand is concerned about the imbalance of forces in Europe...
...Last year, he began to deploy troops at the frontier, and by the spring he was advancing...
...An even wider gap exists in the case ofFrenchandU.S...
...Claude Estier, president of the Foreign Policy Commission of the National Assembly, told me: "U.S...
...We told [Interior Minister Tomas] Borge that the best way for Nicaragua to plead its case before the international community, to gain protection from American aggression and internal destabilization, is to show that Nicaragua is open to negotiation and democratization of the regime," Estier concluded...
...Since France has its own force de frappe, and is not integrated into the NATO military command, there has been no question of placing U.S...
...attempts to undermine the Sandinista regime in Nicaragua, and he would bring the Soviets into discussions on the Middle East...
...The Reagan Administration's invasion of Grenada did not go down well here either...
...modifies its position, it risks serious difficulties with France...
...He also takes a different view of liberation movements than Washington does, believing they must be supported if they are to be kept out of the Communist camp...
...A Foreign Ministry official explained to me that the President endorsed deployment because he was "preoccupied by the pacifism in Europe...
...This time Goukouni was out, and he went to Libya...
...Estier said he told former U.S...
...France, in line with its policy of supporting whatever government is in power, recognized him, as did the OAU states...
...Indeed, the French consider the whole sequence in Chad as typical of the U.S...
...It was a great failure of U.S...
Vol. 67 • March 1984 • No. 5
