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French Pol Blames ’Neo-Con’ Ideas for U.S.-Europe Tensions
France’s Defense Minister criticized "certain radical neo-conservative ideas" in the United States as harmful to U.S. relations with Europe.
Radical neo-conservative = anybody slighty patriotic.... who’s not French that is.
While France remains a major partner of the United States,
an easily correctable problem
Minister Michele Alliot-Marie singled out on Friday what she called American aspirations for economic supremacy as well as assertions of cultural and political supremacy.
....and then her lips fell off.
The French official did not identify whom she held responsible for asserting such views. "It is essential we recognize others’ positions" as part of a trans-Atlantic discourse, she said. In a speech at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a private research group, Alliot-Marie emphasized that Europeans had "a different sensibility" from the United States toward the Arab-Muslim world.
They’re terrified of them. Actually, that’s pretty sensible.
Outlining the views of France, she said while terrorism is a great threat, its causes must be addressed, which she identified as "the sense of frustration in the face of injustice and poverty brought on by their own governments."
We've been hearing that since 9-11. I'm tired of hearing it. It's been disproved so many times it's gone from being silly to being ludicrous...
"The humiliation is exploited by fanatics,"
true Alliot-Marie said, while urging "let us work together to eradicate blind violence, but also its roots."
Could she mean the existence of the state of Israel?
France is neither anti-Semitic nor anti-Israel, the defense minister said, while implicitly holding Israel accountable.
Yep. That’s exactly what she meant.
"We should be listening more to the Arab-Muslim world," she said. "The sense of injustice and humiliation is really very widespread."
It could be because they're addicted to deep-laid plots and Byzantine conspiracies and don't do either very well. Oh, and their governments rule, rather than governing.
Overall, Alliot-Marie’s message was one of working together with the United States on international security. "It is something of a paradox that France should sometimes be stigmatized in Washington as a strategic adversary of the United States," the minister said. "To listen to some quarters, France is supposed to be trying to develop a counterweight to the United States, especially through European integration," she said. "Nothing strikes me as being further from reality."
Uh, lady, those quarters happen to be your own foreign minister.
France and the Bush administration have been at odds over the U.S.-led war in Iraq, which France tried to block at the United Nations with calls for more weapons searches in preference to going to war. But France has cooperated with the United States in promoting economic recovery in Afghanistan. "Faced with the difficulties the U.S. is encountering in certain parts of the world, it needs the support of its European allies," she said. On Thursday, in Paris, the French defense minister said France, Germany and Japan could work together closely to train Iraq’s police and soldiers once the French Iraqis have control of their oil fields government.
Posted by: Secret Master 2004-01-16
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=24494