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Blair Thought Chirac ’Out to Get Him’
British Prime Minister Tony Blair thought French leader Jacques Chirac was "out to get him" by exploiting acrimony over Iraq to supersede him in Europe, according to extracts of a new biography of Blair published on Monday. "I’m convinced he believed the conflict with Chirac had expanded beyond Iraq to become a contest for the political leadership of Europe," author Philip Stephens told Reuters. "Chirac hoped that Blair would be toppled."
Surprise meter’s reading "0.000".
Stephens’ view of the tense Anglo-French relationship was the most revelatory part of sections of his biography: "From Tony Blair," to be launched early next month. In extracts published by the Financial Times, Stephens traced the growing feud early last year when Britain’s support of the coming U.S.-led war in Iraq was bitterly opposed by Paris. "During the next few months Blair came to believe — partly on the basis of reports from British intelligence — that the dispute over Iraq was in fact a proxy for a much more serious contest," Stephens wrote.
Would the French ever NOT have ulterior motives for any action they take?
"Chirac, these reports said, had decided that Blair had usurped his own position as the natural leader of the world Europe. It was time for the French president to re-erect reassert himself and to clip the wings of perfidious Albion.
Tony’s the eagle here, Jacques more like a buzzard.
"Unsurprisingly, French officials dismissed this peasant analysis. But Blair came to believe it, telling close aides that Chirac was ’out to get him."’ Relations between London and Paris hit their lowest point days before the war when the British government accused France of scuttling a U.N. resolution authorizing military action. Stephens wrote that "snippets of the French president’s private conversations reported to Blair suggested that he would like to see him burned at the stake fall" at that time. The pair had previously clashed over EU farm subsidies.
Of course they clashed. They stand for two radically different things -- Tony’s for liberty and freedom.
The "exquisite irony" for Blair was that Chirac’s tough line then gave him an excuse to go to war without U.N. approval, plus a useful propaganda boost at home in "rekindling the national tradition of hostility toward France," the author added.
Not seen since 1815!
"’It would be so much easier if the vote was about war with France,’ one Blair loyalist only half joked as the prime minister scrambled for votes," Stephens wrote.
And Britain has a Nelson or two in the wings, I’m sure!
Although tensions remain on Iraq and some EU issues, Paris and London have engaged in plenty of pretend diplomatic fence-mending since last year’s low, and Blair and Chirac have gone out of their way in public to avoid exchanging blunt instruments demonstrate mutual politeness.
Sad to say that Chirac will probably last in office longer than Tony. But I know which one is our friend.
Posted by: Steve White 2004-01-26
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=25076