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French FM makes lightning visit to US
From the Rantburg Diplomacy Desk:
France's Foreign Minister Michel Barnier was due [in Washington] Wednesday for the first visit by a senior Paris official since President George W. Bush was re-elected and pledged to repair US alliances bruised by Iraq war. Barnier, whose country spearheaded opposition to the war, was flying in for a lightning round of talks with outgoing Secretary of State Colin Powell and his designated successor, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice. With Bush due to visit Europe in February on a high-profile fence-mending tour,| Good fences make good neighbours. Or so they say. |
the French press has been rife with speculation that Barnier might be carrying an invitation from President Jacques Chirac to come to Paris. But French foreign ministry officials said they had no knowledge of any such invitation, although they did not specifically rule out the possibility. Barnier, who has had ample occasion to see Powell at a flurry of international conferences in recent weeks, was making his first bilateral visit to the United States since becoming foreign minister on March 31. He was expected to fly back on Thursday to attend a European Union summit in Brussels.| "And boy, will my arms be tired!" |
Armed with a new four-year mandate, Bush has made it clear that any rapprochement would have to be on US terms. He stood by his right to take unilateral, pre-emptive military action if American security interests were threatened. But Barnier said this week that while renewing trans-Atlantic links was of fundamental importance, the relationship between Washington and its oldest ally must be balanced. "Alliance does not mean allegiance," he said in an interview with the newspaper Le Parisien. "We listen to each other, respect each other, agree sometimes and we can also have differing analyses."
Still, there has been some encouraging evidence of cooperation. France agreed to write off a substantial portion of the debt it was owed by Iraq while the United States kept its mouth shut and looked the other way backed Paris in the crisis over the Ivory Coast. Barnier could use his talks in Washington to promote his call for an early international summit on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and an acceleration of efforts to reach a final solution. But Bush, who discussed the Middle East last month here with British Prime Minister Tony Blair, responded cautiously to prospects for holding an international conference anytime soon. "I'm all for conferences, just so long as the conferences produce something," he said.
Posted by: Seafarious 2004-12-16 |
