How France Views KOSOVO
VALLS-RUSSELL, JANICE
STRANGE BEDFELLOWS How France Views Kosovo By Janice Valls-Russell Paris Like all other European Union (EU) citizens, the French will go to the polls on June 13 to elect their European...
...During Serbia's war against Bosnia, and the worst moments of Sarajevo's four-year siege, one heard regrets here that the U.S...
...STRANGE BEDFELLOWS How France Views Kosovo By Janice Valls-Russell Paris Like all other European Union (EU) citizens, the French will go to the polls on June 13 to elect their European Parliament representatives...
...When television viewers tire of all the suffering being splashed across their screens, they may show it in the way they cast their ballots next month: According to an opinion poll conducted in early May, one voter in two still had not decided on the list of candidates he or she would back...
...His apparent reluctance to take in refugees has shocked a number of people, including several in his own Socialist Party...
...On April 16, Philippe Séguin announced that he was quitting his post as president of the neo-Gaullìst Rally for the Republic Party (RPR...
...His criticism is muted, though, by the presence of Communist ministers in Prime Minister Lionel jospin's government...
...Nevertheless, Bayrou points to the war as proof of the need for closer European cooperation...
...His regular television addresses on the conflict seem to touch a chord, for his popularity rating has shot up to 72 per cent since the battle began...
...Fund-raising has reached record levels, and some 300,000 French families have offered to play host to Kosovars...
...For the forthcoming Euro election he has joined forces with Philippe de Villiers, a caustic aristocrat who sails a chauvinistic course in the narrow straits that separate the RPR and DL's fringe of dour conservatives and the xenophobic far Right...
...Others in the RPR similarly feel France is betraying Charles de Gaulle's ideal of diplomatic independence...
...Moreover, Jospin is supported by the Greens, who justify the war against Milosevic on humanitarian grounds...
...In Europe, it could become a nightmare, and ignoring the problem won't make it go away...
...Of late, he has been increasingly irritated by what he sees as a rapprochement between President Jacques Chirac, theRPR's leader until his 1995 election, and François Bayrou, head of the pro-European and centrist Union for French Democracy...
...Writing in the conservative daily Figaro, he has railed against EU members for not spending enough on defense and remaining dependent on America...
...The European Community was overshadowed—yet to some degree perhaps also protected—by the fortress of the Warsaw Pact bloc...
...Regrettably, coverage of the Kosovo turmoil has blotted out rather than stimulated interest in the European Parliament campaign...
...He also quit the joint list of 87 candidates for the European balloting that his party had drawn up with its free-market ally, the Liberal Democratic Party (DL...
...Generally, the French intellectuals who sided with the Bosnians are backing NATO...
...The forced exodus and persecution of Kosovo's Albanians remind him of World War II's millions of victims being deported across Europe...
...Not insignificantly, France's Socialist Prime Minister and neo-Gaullist President see eye to eye on the Serbian crisis...
...Janice Valls-Russell writes about French and Spanish affairs for the NL...
...They are impressed, as are many others on the Left, by the fact that NATO is acting on behalf of a Muslim minority in the absence of visible economic returns...
...The previous day in Le Monde (whose editorials actually back NATO), former Che Guevara follower Régis Debray served up his nostalgia for de Gaulle...
...40 per cent say they are grateful to America for intervening in Kosovo...
...The French Communist Party, of course, opposes the war...
...20 per cent, however, think this time the goal is to protect human rights...
...While acknowledging that its members may not all be prepossessing or clear about their objectives, Bruckner maintains there are situations in which one cannot be too choosy...
...This underlies his reservations about NATO's intervention on behalf of Kosovo's persecuted Albanians, too...
...Distasteful as Milosevic's deeds may be, in Séguin's view they are an internal affair...
...Who wins and who loses will indicate to what extent NATO's war against Slobodan Milosevic's Serbia affected how people voted...
...Recalling Serb actions in Bosnia, she writes: "The ethnic cleansing had already begun...
...By and large, public opinion approves of the Allies' decision to use force against Milosevic...
...It is time, he argues, for Europeans to "show that they are truly European" and mature, "not constantly dependent on Big Brother...
...Another prominent RPR critic of the fray is Charles Pasqua, the populist former Interior Minister...
...and its Allies thought Iraq's oil was worth fighting for but not Bosnia's women and children...
...From Villiers' perspective the Kosovo conflict is "setting Europe on fire...
...Séguin's mistrust of Europe largely derives from his attachment to national sovereignty...
...In contrast, Jospin has seemed remote, even though he backs the military action against Milosevic...
...Interior Minister Jean-Pierre Chevènement, who stepped down as Defense Minister at the outbreak of the Gulf War and now leads a small breakaway Leftist group called the Citizens' Movement, is also keeping mum...
...Alain Peyrefitte, a former Gaullist minister, describes the war as "mortifying evidence" that "Washington controls Europe...
...The fear is that allowing in too many refugees could create social tension and be politically damaging...
...On April 2, he cosigned a column in Le Monde with Max Gallo, a Socialist opponent of the Gulf War and the author of an admiring biography of de Gaulle...
...Claire Tréan, ajournalist at Le Monde who is not always tender with the U.S., notes that "it is Milosevic who chose to have a war...
...His line, endorsed by Foreign Minister Hubert Védrine, is that the refugees should not be scattered around the world, since this would be playing into Milosevic's hands...
...Pascal Bruckner, who belongs to the media-conscious coterie of French philosophes, has called for weapons and financial aid for the Kosovo Liberation Army...
...it was massively programmed by Milosevic and cannot be blamed on NATO'S decision to intervene, even if that has sped up the process...
...The Union, in contrast, is liable to increasingly find restless, unstable neighbors on its borders as it expands to take in new members...
...Its leader, Robert Hue, describes it as a "connerie" (bloody stupidity...
...Nor has there been any attempt to assess the extent to which the war in Yugoslavia casts light on the changing shape and outline of Europe...
...He envisions the ultimate formation of a "federation" that will merge the EU member states...
...They have implicitly criticized Chirac, who denounces the "horror planned and organized by Milosevic" as "unacceptable...
...Chirac would agree...
...He has expressed "consternation" at the bombing of "a European nation" and an "old ally of France," and gone on to regret calling in "people from across the Atlantic to solve a problem we are not able to settle ourselves...
...In a more sentimental, or perhaps spiritual vein, Bernard-Henri Levy sees "holiness" in the gaze of a young child fleeing Kosovo and "the soul of Europe" in the refugees' dreadful suffering...
...So far, the war has claimed at least one political victim here...
...Public opinion is fairly evenly divided between those who favor a European-only defense policy, those who prefer a European defense force integrated into NATO, and those who don't know or won't say...
...Pasqua has found further support at the opposite end of the political spectrum, where ideological fault lines that cut across political parties during the Gulf War have re-emerged...
...One of his erstwhile followers, the eponymous grandson of Charles de Gaulle, has gone over to JeanMarie Le Pen's National Front...
...Séguin is known for his unpredictable temper—a volatile mixture of vulnerability, irony and rebelliousness—as well as his lack of enthusiasm for the European Union...
...But many suspect he is yielding to Chevènement, who is bent on curbing immigration into France...
...But the issue, important as it is, has not inspired an in-depth debate among the candidates...
...But growing uncertainty over the outcome of the conflict could lead to a shift in attitudes...
...An opinion poll carried out in mid-April showed about 60 per cent of the French believe that, even in Kosovo, the U. S. is motivated by political andmilitary interests...
...Bayrou, who is fielding his own list for the June 13 contest, insists there can be "no ambiguity" on Europe...
...If the conflict goes on too long and the return of Kosovo's 800,000 or so refugees is delayed, public opinion in France and the other NATO countries may well change...
...Pushing back the frontier may be an ideal in America...
...The General would have known how to say boo to those "arrogant," "manichean," "impulsive" Americans, he declared...
...After equating "Milosevic's brutality" and the "violence of [NATO] bombings," Pasqua and Gallo regret that de Gaulle is no longer around to ensure France's diplomatic "independence...
Vol. 82 • May 1999 • No. 6
