www.nydailynews.com/news/ideas_opinions/story/67450p-62790c.html
The barrage of anti-war, anti-Bush and anti-American propaganda verges at times on the hysterical. In an op-ed piece in the center-right daily Le Figaro, Brice Lalonde, a former cabinet minister, recently caricatured the current French view of America this way: "The Americans give the appearance of respecting democracy. In reality, they walk around armed to the teeth and pass their time shooting at passersby and Indians. The prisons are full of poor people condemned to the electric chair. But it would be wrong to conclude that President Jacques Chirac's (and France's) anti-war stance is motivated solely by anti-American feelings. A careful reading of the French press reveals a Machiavellian game plan designed to serve France's national interest and Chirac's own grand world design by, among other things, avoiding war and keeping Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein in place, even at the cost of poisoning French-American relations. As reflected in the French media, Chirac, like Charles DeGaulle before him, has always seen France as the rightful leader not only of Europe, but of Africa and the Mideast. Chirac has long been regarded by the press as a special friend of Iraq and Saddam. The relationship dates to 1974, when Chirac traveled to Baghdad - the first French prime minister to do so - and met Saddam, then vice president. Saddam paid a return visit at Chirac's invitation in 1975 and signed a variety of economic accords, including one for the purchase of nuclear reactors (the ones destroyed by the Israelis in 1981). According to the satirical weekly Le Canard-Enchaine, after Chirac become prime minister again in 1986, he proposed that France help rebuild the Osirak reactor (nicknamed Ochirac by his political enemies). Today, France ranks first as a supplier of products and services to Iraq. According to the French business magazine L'Expansion, in 2001, France's exports to Iraq amounted to $600 million, more than double the figure in 1997. This was almost 14% of Iraq's total imports and twice the value of exports from Australia, China, Italy, Vietnam and Germany. L'Expansion also reported that France has helped to arm and modernize Iraq since the 1970s, including construction of Baghdad's airport, water system and southern motor highway, not to mention 130 Mirage fighters. And France's Total is the oil company with contracts covering the largest percentage of Iraq's oil reserves. According to the media, what the French government and business circles fear most in case of Saddam's departure is that France will lose its privileged position in the Iraqi market just when the French economy is in serious difficulty. Small wonder that France is lobbying so intensely to prevent regime change while pressing for continuation of the UN's snail-paced disarming of Iraq, now in its 13th year, and an eventual lifting of sanctions. Shapiro is a lawyer and a member of the New York and Paris bars.
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