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Iraq Crisis Should Not Overshadow Mideast Conflict: France

German Chancellor, French President bond over Iraq

PARIS, October 3 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) – As French President Jacques Chirac joined forces with German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder late Wednesday, October 2, in declaring their opposition to an automatic recourse to force against Iraq, French Foreign Minister warned that the Iraq crisis should not be allowed to overshadow the terrible situation in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

“Lifting the siege on the Muqataa is not enough,” Dominique de Villepin told the French parliament, referring to PLO leader Yasser Arafat’s headquarters in Nablus in the West Bank.

“We must apply U.N. Security Council Resolution 1435 and the E.U.’s road-map for negotiations, adopted by the quartet,” he said, referring to joint mediation efforts by the United States, the European Union, the United Nations and Russia, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported.

“We must go further and revive a genuine prospect of peace," he added.

In order to achieve this, “we must support Palestinian reforms, elections in the Palestinian territories and an Israeli withdrawal, and we must revive the idea of an international conference, the only thing that can put momentum back into the peace process,” he said.

The E.U.’s plan to resolve the conflict was adopted in mid September in New York by the four mediators. This three-stage road-map calls for Palestinian elections in January 2003 and the creation of a Palestinian state in 2005.

As well as lifting the siege of Yasser Arafat’s headquarters, Security Council Resolution 1435 foresees an end to terrorism and violence, Israel’s withdrawal from the autonomous territories, and reforms in the Palestinian Authority.

Meanwhile, French President joined forces with German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder late Wednesday, in declaring their opposition to an automatic recourse to force against Iraq, AFP said.

“We are totally hostile to a resolution now which is based on making military intervention automatic,” Chirac said with Schroeder at his side after a joint dinner at the Elysees palace.

The meal was the German leader’s first meeting with Chirac since Schroeder narrowly won re-election on September 22.

“The French and German approach (to the crisis) is the same,” Chirac said.

“I am happy at France’s understanding,” Schroeder told reporters.

Schroeder had made it clear during his election campaign that he was opposed to Washington’s planned military campaign to oust Saddam, even with United Nations blessing, thereby alienating U.S. leaders.

However, France has not ruled out a recourse to force but only if it is backed by the U.N. Security Council, AFP said.

On Tuesday, October 1, Germany’s Handelsblatt newspaper quoted a top Pentagon adviser, Richard Perle, as saying Schroeder “would do better to resign” following his anti-war electioneering.

Schroeder’s first foreign trip after winning the election was to London last week, where he sought the help of British Prime Minister Tony Blair, Washington’s closest ally, in rebuilding his country’s links with the United States.

His trip to see Chirac Wednesday carried several messages.

It primarily showed he was pursuing an improvement in U.S. relations through his closest E.U. partners and was keen to reinforce London-Paris-Berlin cooperation in the European bloc.

But making Paris his second stop was a jab at Chirac, who had signaled he would have been happy to work with Schroeder’s defeated election rival, conservative Edmund Stoiber, and a recognition that France's opposition to a hard-line draft U.S. resolution on Iraq was unlikely to make the French president a persuasive friend of Washington at the moment, AFP said.

There is also the fact that France was unsettled by Schroeder's anti-war stance, given the two countries’ contribution to the Eurocorps European military force and Paris’s view that a common European position should be that military action against Iraq must have U.N. authorization.

To calm the waters, officials in Schroeder’s Social Democratic Party (SPD) said Monday, September 30, that Berlin could change its mind about intervening in Iraq if new evidence of Baghdad's weapons programs were provided and if such action was not aimed at overthrowing Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.

Chirac and Schroeder also promised they would try to find common ground on E.U. expansion and would meet again this month before the informal European summit in Brussels on October 23 and 24.

Meanwhile, Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev on Wednesday warned the United States that a strike on Iraq would spark an international crisis, in an interview with Austrian national television.

“If the U.S. does not listen to Iraq, it should listen to its friends China, Russia and France. War would be a severe blow to all relationships, and would spark a crisis in the U.N. and the U.N. Security Council, and that is something very serious,” Gorbachev said.