The Media Column: The French press is rethinking its anti-coalition attitudes

There is no French equivalent for "cheese-eating surrender monkeys". The puerile insult that has crossed the Atlantic after years of trying has no resonance there. France does not regard its hostility to Anglo-US unilateralism as cowardice. But, last Thursday, the French media did, briefly, perceive a need for attitude-adjustment.

Until Saddam was vanquished, headlines such as "The tragedy", in the weekly news magazine Le Point, were ubiquitous. Even L'Actu, an educational newspaper for teenagers, got in on the act. Last Wednesday's edition carried a cartoon depicting a GI firing at an Iraqi civilian under the caption: "I am feeding Iraqis."

Then doubt set in. An editorial in Thursday's Le Figaro admitted, "The Americans have won the war – in only three weeks. It is a victory for George Bush." Le Monde, too, adopted a less Gaullist tone. "The dictator who terrorised Iraq" was the title of a two-page spread, one of many items in newspapers and on television that itemised the cruelty of the defeated regime.

François Géré, of the Institute for Diplomacy and Defence, said, "The French are discovering the truth – that the coalition was efficient." At the Institute of International Relations, Philippe Moreau Defarges agreed. "We are starting to hear a more dissonant voice in France," he said. "The US victory has made the debate more complex."

It was certainly becoming more nuanced, but French journalism was not about to capitulate. Amid the scenes of jubilation broadcast live from Baghdad, the state-owned France 2 TV station could still describe Shia citizens greeting American soldiers as "meeting their new masters". By Saturday, the orgy of looting in the Iraqi capital offered new justification for involvement by the French-German-Russian troika, caricatured in Libération as the "Club Non-Nein-Niet".

Writing in Le Monde, Philippe Séguin, a former president of the National Assembly, demanded the immediate reinvigoration of French diplomacy. Describing opposition to the conflict as something "of which we were all so proud", he declared that France had not "come to the bank of the Rubicon in order to go fishing". It was time to "know what we want and to say it".

That was the point at which nuance was transformed into the type of hand-wringing that muscular British tabloids regard as proof of French impotence. An editorial in Libération summed it up. "The worst is never certain," wrote Serge July, lamenting the absence of an "authentic Machiavelli" in Washington, DC. "It is enough for it to be the most likely outcome for it to provoke grave concerns."

Le Monde was determined to be more precise. A front-page opinion piece by Robert Malley of the International Crisis Group described the reconstruction of Iraq's civil and economic infrastructure as an "opportunity for Europe". France's resolutely high-brow newspaper culture was united in asserting the need for European involvement. The obvious problem is that of how it can best be achieved – if it can be achieved at all.

Some commentators dared to point out that President Chirac would have put France in a better position to participate in the future had he opted for abstention instead of veto. But, as one observed, before going on to do precisely that, "There is no point in crying over spilt milk." Saturday's editorial in Libération was equally concerned about Chirac's vulnerability. It warned that the negotiations between France, Germany and Russia were in danger of "looking like academic debates" and demanded "concrete proposals that will be applicable in the days to come".

Ouest France, the country's biggest-circulation daily, tried to make some. Under the headline "French diplomacy on trial", it made a suggestion that will make hearts sing in Downing Street. Was it not time for Europeans to make common cause with Tony Blair? "Not in order to pledge allegiance to one of the victors", but because "the British Prime Minister has routinely positioned himself as the mediator between the two sides of the Atlantic, and, at the moment, George Bush cannot refuse him much." Ouest France is confident that Blair can help France back into the action in the Middle East.

Involvement is the ambition of every French newspaper. Clearly, few leader-writers on that side of the Channel have been reading British tabloids. If they had, they might grasp the significance of the "monkeys" insult and the editorial sentiments that will make a Blair-orchestrated rapprochement with Paris so problematic.

timlckhrst@aol.com