Behind US-France rift: their roles in world

With the US Congress now firmly behind President Bush, the quest for support to take on Iraq shifts to the international arena and the United Nations. And there, in a body where not all 191 members are created equal, much of the US effort to forge a common purpose will focus on France.

In a foretaste of what's to come, President Bush last week telephoned his French counterpart, Jacques Chirac, to lay the groundwork for what promises to be days, if not weeks, of hard-nosed negotiations between the world's sole superpower and a country thought by many to have diplomatic ambitions far surpassing its resources and power.

For France, this diplomatic pas de deux is as much about the future workings of the international system – and America's place in it – as it is about Iraq's threat to international security, officials and analysts say. The main French concern is the US attempt to forge a new right to pre-emptive action.

"France, like a number of other countries, is pretty alarmed at the prospect of a superpower that can take military action anywhere it wants without restraint, so for them the focus becomes influencing that power as much as anything else," says Paul Saunders, director of the Nixon Center, a policy-study center here. "For the French, the Security Council is the last line of defense."

Three other countries besides the US and France are permanent members of the UN Security Council and have veto power over Security Council resolutions – the United Kingdom, Russia, and China. But it is France that is most clearly stumping America's drive for international unity against Iraq.

The US, backed by Britain, wants a tough Security Council resolution that contains both unfettered weapons inspections and if the Iraqis hinder full inspections, as in the past, the threat of war. France, backed by Russia, wants two resolutions – the first authorizing a tough inspections regime. Only a second, eventual resolution would authorize military intervention if the Iraqis failed to abide by the first.

The two-step resolution would address France's real concerns about Iraq, which it shares with the US, but also those about what it sees as an America prone to a pistol-packing diplomacy. "For the French, this is about America and its relations with them and the world," says a senior European diplomat in Washington.

France sees the Bush administration snubbing other global organizations – such as the International Criminal Court, or the Kyoto Protocol on climate change – and they seize upon the Security Council as the last best hope for reining in the US juggernaut.

"The French, like most Europeans, don't want to give carte blanche to the Americans," says Francois Heisbourg, director of the Institute for Strategic Research in Paris.

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