How Saddam Helped Chirac

...No one cared to remember that France opposed Kofi Annan's election to his present position, preferring instead French-educated Boutros Boutros-Ghali...

...It's a matter of ethics, not economics...

...Both Iraq and Israel, said Ralph Pinto, a leading radio commentator, have failed to implement UN resolutions, yet America does not treat them in the same way...

...Socialist Jack Lang, who presides over the Foreign Affairs Committee in the National Assembly, advocates allowing Iraq to resume its place on the international scene...

...The news that Kofi Annan had wrested an agreement of sorts from the Iraqi leader was greeted with relief here and hailed as a French victory...

...Le Figaro ran a story detailing the misery most Iraqis live in—while neglecting to mention the palaces their leader builds or the arsenal he is stockpiling...

...Chirac himself, in an interview with Le Monde, praised the Secretary General for his negotiating skills and stressed the complementary effects of U.S...

...In the 1980s, when Hussein's image of "secular modernity" and his lavish hospitality seduced politicians, businessmen and intellectuals, Chevènement helped to found an organization to promote French-Iraqi relations...

...Here, as in the Arab world, it is the U. S. that is accused of double standards...

...Such comparisons between Iraq and Israel have been called "obscene" by a columnist in Le Figaro, but his has been a lonely voice...

...This may be wishful thinking...

...This time, before United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan set out for Baghdad, the French President declared that "everything should be done to avoid women and children being killed...

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

...Certainly, though, Saddam Hussein's outrageous behavior has combined with some well-timed Gallic posturing to increase President Chirac's visibility...

...One French grievance following the Gulf War was that Americans handled the lion's share of the reconstruction in Kuwait...

...Trade, however, will take off only if sanctions are lifted...

...After publicly opposing the use of force then, he stepped down when Mitterrand decided to send French troops to the Gulf...

...That American strength and French statecraft were used in concert to neutralize the situation in Iraq is fanciful...

...Jospin approves of the President's attempts to help secure a diplomatic settlement as well...

...The impression here is that, in spite of the military buildup in the Persian Gulf, there has been a certain amount of bluff and improvisation in President Bill Clinton's threats of air strikes on Iraq...

...On this point his Third World sympathies dovetail with his desire as Interior Minister to prevent unrest at home, particularly among North African immigrants...

...for the embargo but claims it has so far cost a million lives...

...Whereas the 1918 Versailles Treaty may have helped bring Hitler to power, Iraq already has a Hitler of sorts who has not shrunk from using poison gas against his own people...

...asks Chevènement...

...The most outspoken member of the government has been Interior Minister Jean-Pierre Chevènement, who was Defense Minister when Iraq invaded Kuwait...

...Iraq is one case, though, where Chirac is proving consistent...

...stand...

...Foreign affairs is an area where consensus is easiest in times of government cohabitation, and Foreign Minister Hubert Védrine, a former adviser to Mitterrand, has been working and talking along the same lines as Chirac...

...All that came as Moscow was warning Washington against military action, which it considers a threat to its interests in the region...

...Italian Foreign Minister Lamberto Dini has described the Iraqi leader as "a ruthless dictator who does not hesitate to have members of his own family murdered...

...Noting that those on the Left who loudly demanded embargoes against General Augusto Pinochet's Chile and South Africa at the time of apartheid are now silent, Tréan asked: Should one put this down to some newfound realism...

...Already, a French firm has been hired to rebuild a Baghdad mosque—obviously more of a priority with Hussein than schools and hospitals...

...Again, this would mean endingthe embargo that, in the opinion of a French diplomat, places Iraq in the same humiliating situation as Germany after World War I. The analogy is false...

...There is nothing like an international crisis to take people's minds off domestic issues, and Jospin had started slipping in the polls after large numbers of jobless people noisily made their frustrations known over Christmas (see "French Labor Pains," NL, January 26...

...A drug supposedly intended for pregnant women needing Cesarean sections was being used as a component for chemical weapons...

...But then, as students at the February 18 town meeting in Columbus, Ohio, asked: If Hussein is like Hitler, why not "go in and get him...

...Nevertheless, France's oil companies and construction giants are eager to lay their hands on Iraq's oilfields (the Russians have similarly been eyeing them) and to secure contracts for rebuilding the country...

...But he fails to point out that sanctions do not apply to food and medicine...

...He too is proving consistent...

...Asked by a journalist how far France was ready to go to appease Hussein, he responded, "Where humanitarian issues are at stake, France's patience is unlimited...

...Even if not covered by sanctions, the article observed, food and medicine are rationed in order to lay the blame at America's door, so what is made available does not reach those who need it most...

...Those who suffer are the weak," he says, "not their leaders...

...And an Iraqi minister has now said France deserves "privileged" contracts when the time comes to renovate oil installations...

...THE IRAQ CRISIS-1 How Saddam Helped Chirac By Janice Valls-Russell Paris From the perspective of Gaullist President Jacques Chirac and Socialist Prime Minister Lionel Jospin, Iraqi ruler Saddam Hussein chose exactly the right moment to bully his way back into the headlines...

...This has encouraged France to whistle its favorite tune: Being a friend and ally of America does not prevent us from speaking out independently on world affairs...

...Nor does he say how Saddam can be brought to heel if military strikes and the embargo are ruled out...

...In Le Monde journalist Claire Tréan, arguing against embargoes, contended that Fidel Castro and Saddam Hussein have used them to whip up nationalist feelings and consolidate their hold on their countries...

...Saddam was their hero in 1991, and Arab propaganda reaches France via satellite television—as did footage of the recent proSaddam demonstrations in Egypt, Gaza and the West Bank...

...UN officials found that the ambulance tires Iraq had asked for were being fitted onto military vehicles...

...Do we want to be dragged into a headon confrontation with the Arab and Muslim world...

...But his reproof of Saddam Hussein's attitude has also been less forceful than the rebukes of other statesmen...

...Journalists congratulated Chirac for lending Annan his plane—thus ensuring he would stop in Paris on his way back to New York...

...There was an upward surge in public opinion polls for both Chirac and Jospin...

...military pressure and French diplomacy...

...France's two main national dailies, the Center-Left Le Monde and the Rightist Le Figaro, have reported UN officials' fears that Iraq has been developing biological weapons over the last 10 years...

...Since defense and diplomacy are presidential prerogatives, Chirac's has been the most audible French voice on Iraq...

...As for Chirac, he has been trying to show he still exists since the defeat of his Center-Right majority nine months ago...

...Centrist National Assembly Deputy Claude Goasguen maintains that "having a dictator at the head of Iraq, which is in such a potentially explosive region, does not make for stability...

...Chirac opposes the embargo imposed by the UN Security Council in 1991...

...By and large, however, the media have tended to play down Hussein's military potential, the oppressiveness of his regime, and his using his people as human shields to defend strategic sites...

...Given his sense of Gaullist grandeur, it is not surprising that he did not join Britain's Prime Minister Tony Blair in fully backing the tough US...

...The converse argument, though, is more frequently heard: Unpalatable as he may be, Saddam helps to keep the region stable by containing Iran, and he can no longer do much harm outside his own borders...

...Politicians andjournalists worry that an attack on Iraq would ruin what remains of the Arab-Israeli peace process...

...Even the mildest endorsement of American air strikes on Iraq would cause his coalition of Socialists, Communists and Greens to explode: Environment Minister Dominique Voynet, who leads the pacifist Green Party, has in fact warned Jospin that she would resign...

...Or, I would add, to a double standard...

...He not only blames the U.S...

...it is certainly a cynical contradiction of the humanitarian concern for the Iraqi people that is trotted out...

...Why, he asks, should France "endorse America's unacceptable thirst for war...

...Chirac, of course, denies having ulterior motives: "I've never favored killing people...

...At the end of 1990 he expressed uneasiness when the late President François Mitterrand, overriding divisions within the Socialist Party and the opposition, supported President George Bush in sending troops to the Gulf...

...Spanish Prime Minister José Maria Aznar, for example, has said "the Baghdad regime alone is responsible for the present crisis...