A New Swing in U.S.-French Relations
VALLS-RUSSELL, JANICE
MIDDLE EAST HONEYMOON A New Swing in U.S.-French Relations BY JANICE VALLS-RUSSELL Paris Are French-American relations doomed to oscillate forever between mistrust and euphoria? The...
...Depardieu, meanwhile, is delighting American audiences with his stronglyaccented English and boorish manner in Peter Weir's Green Card...
...Unfortunately, it is also the kind of story apt to be taken literally by people unused to a Gallic tradition of ribald humor dating back to Rabelais...
...a USA-versus-Third World Manicheism...
...No doubt many a budgetcutter in Washington would approve...
...For the moment, however, the French President and Foreign Minister Roland Dumas have apparently chosen to stress alliance rather than divergence...
...America is interested only in America...
...From that point on, the media here amplified General H. Norman Schwarzkopf's praise for the French troops—as they advanced into Iraq and subsequently helped demine Kuwait—and exulted over the trans-Atlantic diplomatic duets...
...Décidément, the United States is a puzzling ally...
...Still, unlike Mitterrand, Mauroy questions the ethics of dealing with Arafat...
...Mitterrand attempted right up to the eve of January 15 to persuade Saddam to withdraw from Kuwait, but he never shirked the prospect of war, as some pessimists thought he would...
...During the Gulf conflict, Party Secretary Pierre Mauroy visited Israel and proposed France's assistance in Mideast peace efforts...
...In a recent interview in Le Monde, Dumas took the same line...
...Rocard considers this an encouraging foundation for a new "Euro-American partnership...
...Mitterrand is perhaps more concerned than his American counterpart about the future of Lebanon, and he still believes an international conference will be needed to resolve the Palestinian issue, though he is willing to let the U.S...
...Janice Valls-Russell writes about French and Spanish affairs for the NL...
...He is reported to have been hurt and ashamed when Israeli Prime Minister Yitzchak Shamir responded: "There are already 22 Arab states in the region...
...We do not always think along the same lines, [but] in the end we agree fundamentally and are close allies...
...But his fans have been booing since March 20, when an article in the Washington Post raked up mud previously divulged by other American newspapers about Depardieu's streetwise youth— which, far from trying to hide, the actor delights in exaggerating...
...Mitterrand insists that the functions of NATO should remain limited to the role it was created for, namely to protect Western Europe against the Soviet Union...
...try a regional approach first...
...Twentythree would be one too many...
...Your country's position on Israel is tougher than Egypt's...
...With the Gulf crisis, French-American friendship has taken a new step forward...
...Jean-Paul Rappeneau's Cyrano de Bergerac had after all been nominated for a total of five, including one for its screen-busting leading actor, Gérard Depardieu...
...Charges that he took part in a collective rape at the precocious age of nine were immediately seen here as an attempt to discredit him just before the Oscar ceremony...
...Arab leaders were interviewed at length, while Kuwaiti, Israeli or American guests tended to appear on late-evening, low-audience programs...
...Fabius is also critical of his party's tendency to reason in "?versimple categories, with imperialists on the one hand, proletarians on the other...
...He favors linking economic aid to "moves toward democracy and the respect of human rights...
...Mitterrand maintains that, despite his past support for Saddam Hussein, "Yasir Arafat remains to my knowledge the leader of the Palestine Liberation Organization and, to my knowledge, the PLO continues to be a representative body...
...Oddly, Culture Minister Jack Lang said after the results were announced: "What do you expect...
...Jean Poperen, a senior and once left-wing Socialist, recommends that the party drop its proArab position and adopt one more favorable to Israel...
...But Cheysson's voice, like Chevènement's, appears to be in the minority in the Socialist Party...
...His words contrast sharply with those of Mitterrand's first foreign minister, Claude Cheysson, who thinks France is making "a colossal mistake in following the United States...
...role in the liberation of France in 1944 and stressed that the two countries were "good, if occasionally diverging, allies...
...Is this French-American alliance on the Middle East bound to have negative consequences for Israel...
...Like Bush, they are anxious to use the impetus created by the war to bring peace to the Middle East...
...His skillful handling of public opinion ensured support from the very outbreak of hostilities and enabled him to change his defense minister on January 20...
...The Arab world, he says, cannot "forever blame its problems on neo-colonialism, imperialism and imaginary Zionist plots...
...With a Golden Globeaward, a role in the American comedy Green Card and the Oscar nomination tucked under his ample belt, Depardieu was set to conquer Hollywood—or so it looked from Paris...
...French viewers might have been excused for believing that their soldiers were confined to rearguard logistic activities—until the outbreak of the land battle...
...The question now is whether the pendulum will again swing back...
...Considering that in 1981 Mitterrand's first government, headed by Mauroy, included Cheysson, French Socialists have come a long way toward a more realistic appraisal of the Middle East, the United States, and the party's intertwined relations with both...
...During the past few months, French filmgoers had been less snooty than usual about American culture, particularly Hollywood's Oscars...
...Rocard expanded that theme in the course of his visit to Washington: "France and the United States have a different history and different relations with the peoples of the [Mideast] region...
...The Gulf crisis and, in comic counterpoint, the Depardieu controversy, seem to illustrate the law of pendular inevitability...
...Early in the crisis, the "aggressivity" French TV anchormen referred to was frequently George Bush's instead of Saddam Hussein's...
...Depardieu dismissed the accusations as "dirtying, disgusting and unfair," and decided not to fly to Hollywood, where the award for Best Actor went to Jeremy Irons anyway...
...The usually restrained TV interviewer Anne Sinclair gushed about "a honeymoon," anchorman Bruno Masure presented the two countries as being "on the same wavelength," and the daily Le Monde praised the "entente franco-américaine.' (In contrast, the monthly Le Monde Diplomatique remained critical of the "avoidable" confila in the Gulf and America's "economic" ambitions, described as "the continuation of war by other means...
...After receiving Prime Minister Michel Rocard in Washington, Bush flew to Martinique to meet President François Mitterrand...
...Dumas concedes that "the invasion of Kuwait and the Gulf conflict have destroyed Arab unity, if such a thing ever existed...
...General de Gaulle's Arab policy was a succession of illusions...
...We will do everything to help him...
...Former Defense Minister Yitzchak Rabin was equally harsh: "What interest do we have in associating France with a peace process...
...That is the sort of exploit he might well claim after a drink or two, expecting his audience first to gasp, then to roar with laughter...
...Fabius suggests that French officials deal with the Arab nations "without pretense and without a sense of guilt...
...Of course, the political switch was not nearly so simple as the media's change of tone...
...His hope is to build up military cooperation among European nations and thus lessen their dependence on the United States...
...I have never considered Yasir Arafat a very reliable person to negotiate with...
...Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the Socialist head of the National Assembly's Finance Committee, agrees: "It is not reasonable to believe that the PLO has a role to play after the conflict...
...Other Socialists are more skeptical...
...Whereas Jean-Pierre Chevènement had indulged in anti-American, vaguely pacifist cavils, his successor, Pierre Joxe, recalled the U.S...
...A French actor in an American comedy directed by an Australian...
...Whatever their feeling about the Jewish State, for a number of Socialists the charms of the Arab world have palled over the past several months...
...The "humiliation" of the Arab world was dwelled on, and the "threat" of an "arrogant pax Americana" became a tiresome clich...
...At the same time, the courage and restraint Israel displayed while enduring Iraqi bombings have revived the sympathy French Socialists had for the tiny country before the pro-Arab "revolutionary" 1970s...
...Cyrano had to make do with an Oscar for its costumes...
...Three years of unrest in the West Bank have created sympathy in France for the Palestinians, especially for those living under Israeli control...
...Former Prime Minister Laurent Fabius backs Mitterrand's rapprochement with the U.S., and in mid-March urged the party to "break with Third-Worldism and anti-Americanism...
...I think President Bush is aware of the historic opportunity we have," Dumas has said...
...Attitudes regarding the Gulf war have been no less emotional, parochial and variable...
...The one for Best Foreign Film went to the Turkish-language Swiss movie Journey of Hope...
Vol. 74 • March 1991 • No. 4
