Mitterrand Takes a Strong Stand

...In both cases, Mitterrand defied Left-wingers in his Socialist Party, who were apt to side with Third World countries, including dictatorships, and run down the "imperialist" West...

...Few were as wise as Mitterrand, who managed to avoid visiting Iraq...

...In the National Assembly, when Prime Minister Michel Rocard admitted to being "apprehensive like everyone about resorting to force" but stressed that "there may be no alternative," Conservative deputies cheered...

...At the end of the 1960s, de Gaulle set his Middle East policy on a pro-Arab course, and successive presidents stuck to it...

...Our foreign policy is colored both by Gaullist and by Socialist traditions," she chides...

...Communists are already blaming President George Bush for any further attack Saddam might choose to carry out...

...Former foreign ministers, among them Michel Jobert (Gaullist) and Claude Cheysson (Socialist), rubbed shoulders with top industrialists and fashionable Left-wing writers...

...The partnership was not merely mercantile...

...Petrodollars enabled the Iraqi regime to lavish hospitality on its French "friends...

...At least one senior member of his party has resigned...

...In mid-August a pro-Hussein march in Paris drew about 200 sympathizers...

...Although unenthusiastic about Iraq's President Saddam Hussein, French Communists cynically equate his invasion of Kuwait with America's military presence in the area: Both are "unacceptable," according to an editorial in a Communist weekly that describes the United States as "swarming into the Gulf, a charter of human rights in one hand and a bomb in the other...

...A key to the National Front leader's unexpected enthusiasm for an Arab leader is to be found in the far-Right weekly Minute, which blames the whole Gulf crisis on...

...Prime Minister Rocard must wish his Defense Minister were that categorical...

...The show of support from the Elysée is not without precedent...

...But some who at first seemed indifferent or hostile to Saddam Hussein are now inclined to side with him against President Bush...

...Even after getting his fingers rapped by Mitterrand and by Rocard, Chevènement has continued to insist that "those who contemplate war have not measured its consequences...

...And, indeed, there's the rub...

...an Israeli plot...

...The firmest backing for the American military build-up in the Gulf has come from Britain's Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, as might be expected, but France's President François Mitterrand has been running a close second...

...Sounding the opinions of Arab immigrants in France is difficult...

...He adds, "should there be a war ands hould we take part, it must be France's war: France must remain mistress of her commitments...

...Ironically, Chevènement is the dove of the French government, his hostility to cuts in military outlays notwithstanding...

...The Defense Minister's position may also be a careful counterpoint to Mitterrand's and Rocard's determination: His uneasiness reassures those in his party and in the street who share his feeling, whereas his go-it-alone Gaullism satisfies those in the Right-Center opposition who back Mitterrand but mutter that he lets "others" (i.e...

...This has caused disarray among several of his followers, who are staggered to find him—on this occasion— pro-Arab...

...Janice Valls-Russell writes about French and Spanish affairs for the NL...

...Unsurprisingly, Iraq's ambassador in Paris has praised Le Pen's "courage and sincerity...

...Leftists—who looked to the Third World for exotic new leaders and for colonial sticks to beat the old democracies—were taken in by Hussein's Socialist-revolutionary pose...

...Let the Arabs fight it out...

...Foreign Minister Roland Dumas is more blunt: "Kuwait will not be the Sudetenland...

...Its growing pains were minimized—from the hanging of 15 Iraqis, nine of them Jews, in 1969, to the use of chemical weapons against the Kurds in 1988...

...41 per cent disagreed, and 6 per cent were undecided...

...THE MIDEAST TUG OF WAR-3 Mitterrand Takes a Strong Stand By Janice Valls-Russell Toulouse The European Community's prompt, one-voiced decision to impose sanctions on Iraq after its invasion of Kuwait must have been a pleasant surprise in the United States, even if predictable disagreement emerged on how to enforce an embargo...

...Later, he sided with Britain during the Falklands War, despite France's having equipped Argentina with Exocet missiles...

...While the Soviet Union's arms sales to Iraq exceeded those of France, the CenterRight deputy Alain Madelin feels that it is nonetheless France's moral duty to lend a hand in disarming an aggressor it helped to arm...

...Whatever their Defense Minister's motivations, a majority of French people, 53 per cent, believed at the end of August that France should take part in a war against Iraq if it refuses to pull out of Kuwait...

...we refuse another Munich...

...Neo-Gaullists hailed Hussein's Arab nationalism...

...In 1980, while still in opposition, Mitterrand expressed sympathy for Jimmy Carter's botched attempt to free American hostages held in Teheran...

...During Iraq's war with Iran, France sent Hussein five planes equipped with Exocet missiles, leading senior British and American defense officials to privately warn their French counterparts not to help " set the Gulf on fire...

...Chevènement is so "anguished" by the prospect of war in the Gulf that on August 21 he issued an anonymous communique questioning France's position...

...The only politician in France to come out in support of Saddam and his annexation of Kuwait is the leader of the far-Right National Front, Jean-Marie Le Pen...

...Some observers speculate that Chevènement is trying to get himself sacked in order to avoid the political consequences of a military conflict he predicts will cost "tens of thousands of victims...

...Everything was paid for," recalls a visitor to Baghdad, "and we came back with a carpet or a work of art," as well as praise for the "secular, progressive young nation...

...Mitterrand's grimmer warning that France is "for the moment, in a logic of war, however, has sent chills down the pacifist backs of the French Greens...

...A notable exception is the Communist Party, whose leader, Georges Marchais, has accused the French President of "not really giving priority to a political settlement...

...The only thing some people want is to be different from others, especially the Americans...

...He goes on to point out that it is Westem democracies such as France that have helped "to arm and sustain dictators like Saddam Hussein...

...Popular reactions range from "It's about time we put our foot down" to "Why get involved...

...Mitterrand's decision to send a military force to the Gulf to help give teeth to the embargo has by and large met with the approval of the media and the main political parties here...

...It has made some Socialists uneasy too...

...Cultural and political associations— one of which the present Defense Minister, Jean-Pierre Chevènement, helped to found in 1984—promoted exchanges between the two countries...

...The anti-Americanism of his Leftwing youth has evolved into a curious blend of pacifism and Gaullism, leaving him mistrustful of both the United States and Germany...

...Max Gallo, a former government spokesman, rejects war as "utterly barbaric, an escalation of chaos, an absurd solution...

...Its embassy receptions in Paris brought together as many as 4,000 guests in a single evening...

...But it kept up the "irresponsible mercantile policy" the Socialist Party had condemned in opposition...

...Such domestic precautions disgust pro-American politicians like Simone Veil, a respected centrist...

...Defense Ministers were invited, of course, and senior military officers...

...Nearly a decade of government responsibility has given most French Socialists a pragmatic bent, yet for many of them Iraq's invasion of Kuwait was a salutary shock...

...It revealed to those who still needed convincing that "a state is not necessarily progressive just because it is situated somewhere near the tropics," to quote Jean Poperen, an influential figure on the party's Left...

...In Iraq, as elsewhere, France rushed in where Britain no longer trod...

...As if what really mattered was for France to show itself systematically independent...

...Infuriatingly nationalist though he could be, Charles de Gaulle stood by John F. Kennedy during the 1961 Bay of Pigs crisis in Cuba, proving himself more anti-Communist in that instance than anti-American...

...The French presence in the Gulf is, in his view, aimed "not at winning a war but at preventing it...

...since then, the French government has banned all pro-Iraqi demonstrations...

...Politicians, businessmen, and intellectuals were invited to Iraq, courtesy of its government...

...Between 1974 and 198 8, the French and Iraqi governments signed 20 agreements of military cooperation and nine "security" agreements...

...President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing's Administration approved the sale of a nuclear plant to Baghdad, allegedly for civilian ends, which Israeli agents promptly destroyed...

...Bush) take the lead...

...Mitterrand's first government, after briefly considering the sale of a second plant, fortunately dropped the idea...