Anglo-French summit: Why Chirac prefers 'creative cynicism' to confrontation

There is room for only one European statesman on the world stage - and France's President is determined to assert his position

Of all the world leaders involved in the shouting match over Iraq, only one has met Saddam Hussein. In 1975, when Tony Blair was still at university and George Bush was a daddy's boy parachuted into the Texas oil industry, the Prime Minister of France, one J Chirac, met the deputy leader of the Iraqi Baathist party, one S Hussein, in Paris.

There was nothing especially sinister in that meeting (although France went on to sell the Iraqis a nuclear reactor, which the Israelis bombed). At that time everyone – the Americans, the British, the French, the Russians – was cosying up to Baghdad.

The significance of the meeting is that Jacques Chirac, aged 70, is still with us (as, for the time being, is Saddam Hussein). War in Iraq seems inevitable, but how that war is fought, and who takes part, has great and incalculable implications for Europe, for the Atlantic alliance, for relations between the West and the Arab world and for British domestic politics.

Much of what happens depends not on Mr Bush or Mr Blair but on M. Chirac. Today, in Le Touquet, President Chirac will meet Mr Blair for the annual Anglo-French summit, postponed after they quarrelled at the European Union summit in Brussels in November.

By an accident of timing, the delayed summit is far more important than it would have been if it had been held in early December. The two have far better reasons to quarrel now than they did; but they also have much better reasons to try to get on.

Mr Blair's domestic discomfort over the seeming inevitable war would be greatly eased if France would agree to a second United Nations resolution authorising the international community to use force.

Equally, President Chirac is said to be uncomfortable with France's public estrangement from the United States. He is – as far as one can judge – viscerally convinced that war is unnecessary, wrong and dangerous. He also knows that a French decision to block, or veto, a second Security Council resolution would banish the United Nations to the margins and therefore make France's permanent seat on the security council (and incidentally Britain's) valueless.

Until two weeks ago, France had been careful to keep its options open. It tried to delay and moderate, rather than to block. Its position, in many respects, was close to that of Britain and the US "moderates", such as the Secretary of State, Colin Powell.

All of that changed on 20 January when Dominique de Villepin, the French Foreign Minister, used a UN press conference to make a head-on attack on American policy in Mr Powell's astonished presence. Diplomatic sources suggest Mr De Villepin had not intended to go so far. He was carried away with his rhetoric and expressed the real French opinion, rather than the carefully modulated diplomatic opinion.

The problem is that this more overtly anti-American position has proved hugely popular in France. It also provoked Donald Rumsfeld, US Defence Secretary, to insult France, and Germany, as "old Europe".

Can President Chirac now move back towards his old balancing act? There is a tendency in Britain to dismiss M. Chirac as not only a cynic but a fool. This is wrong. M. Chirac is a cynic but he is not a fool.

The French President's approach to the Iraqi crisis, sure-footed at first, less so in recent weeks, has been partly based on a De Gaullian view of France's importance as an independent world voice. It has been partly based on an intellectual distaste for what he sees as the monochrome choices offered by the United States and, publicly at least, lapped up by Britain.

It has been shaped by a determination to assert and protect France's position as a permanent member of the Security Council and therefore an important player in world affairs. It has been based on the need for a strong European voice, independent from, though not necessarily opposed to America (so long as the European voice is broadly France's voice).

Crucially, it has also been based on the President's sense, after three decades in frontline politics, that he, not Mr Blair and not Mr Bush, has the experience, the historical perspective, the grasp of regional and global implications, to plot the wisest course for France, and the world.

We are used to thinking of M. Chirac as a cynical man. But he belongs to a country, to a political class and to a generation that believes (sincerely) that creative cynicism is often less dangerous than gung-ho idealism or confrontationalism.

A large part of M. Chirac's annoyance with Mr Blair in November (although farm policy was the immediate cause) was based on personal pride and rivalry. After his re-election last year, which managed to be lucky and sweeping, the French President wanted to become accepted as a world player.

There is only room for one European world statesman at a time. Mr Blair was standing on that square of the board.

M. Chirac's vanity, as much as his intelligence and his cynicism, may be the key to what happens next. French public opinion, both right and left, is overwhelmingly anti-war.

M. Chirac seems to be personally convinced there is no good argument for a military adventure in Iraq at this time. Perhaps one should not expect a man with as finely tuned demagogic instincts as M. Chirac to act simultaneously against his own instincts and the public will.

A Chirac veto, or even a rearguard action preventing a UN decision, would make the French President the hero for a day, or even a month, not only in France, but in many countries in Europe and in the Arab world. But the war would go ahead; the UN would be by-passed, and French-American relations would be poisoned for a generation.

M. Chirac's popularity would be a pleasing, but useless, popularity. Estranged from America, his ability to play a part in world affairs would be marginal. The French President finds himself bracketed with Germany in the no- war-under-any-circumstances camp. This is not precisely where he intended to be.

To shift again, he needs to be presented with some solid anti-Saddam fact, or at least something that everyone can (cynically) pretend is solid. Maybe General Powell will come up with something in the UN tomorrow. Maybe not. Today's summit will provide clues to M. Chirac's thinking but, most likely, no firm answers. The joint press conference, when Jacques and Tony sit side by side, might be more important than the summit.

What will their body language tell us? Experienced watchers have said President Bush and Mr Blair, after their meeting at Camp David on Friday, did not look as comfortable together as their alleged unity of purpose would lead one to expect. If Mr Blair and M. Chirac look comfortable together, if M. Chirac chooses his words carefully to restore some of the options closed in recent days, France may yet shift into the war camp.

France's only aircraft carrier leaves Toulon for the eastern Mediterranean today on previously unannounced "exercises". Its deployment Gulf-wards is regarded by some in France as a sure sign that President Chirac is not yet sure he can say non to les Anglo-saxons. The name of the ship is, with gentle irony, the Charles de Gaulle.

Vive la France

French foreign and European policy, as conducted by President Jacques Chirac since his re-election last May, can be summed up as follows:

* France's voice in the world, muted during the years of left-right "co-habitation" in Paris, must he heard again.

* This should NOT mean direct confrontation with the United States, or self-defeating anti-American megaphone diplomacy.

* France does not accept that allies should be acolytes. America does not have a monopoly of wisdom.

* The France-Germany alliance must be restored.

* The European Union must be reformed and strengthened to cope with enlargement but there should be no great shift of federal power to Brussels.

* The basic principles of the EU farm policy, common funding of policies to support the income of European farmers, must not be weakened.

* France must be active again in Africa.

* Environmental questions are a vital international issue.