'President of the Maghreb'
French President Jacques Chirac's opposition to the US-led war on Iraq has enhanced his personal popularity and international standing, particularly among young people and French citizens of Arab origin, writes David Tresilian in Paris
One unlooked for effect of the US-led war against Iraq has been the startling rise in the personal popularity and international profile of French President Jacques Chirac, whose approval rating among the French public now stands at well over 80 per cent according to some estimates for his stance on the Iraq crisis and opposition to the US-led war on Iraq.
As demonstrations against the US-led war continue in Paris and across France, sections of France's population of Arab origin, thought to number some four million and mostly from the Maghreb countries of Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia, have gone so far as to dub Chirac, on the French right and not hitherto considered likely to appeal to France's population of immigrant origin, as 'president of the Maghreb' for his role in voicing international opposition to the US-led war.
Chirac's personal approval rating for his opposition to the US-led war comes against a background of continuing French public condemnation of US actions in Iraq. According to an opinion poll conducted for Le Monde and the French television channel TF1 and published in the French newspaper at the weekend, 78 per cent of the French public disapprove of the US military intervention in Iraq, 65 per cent laying responsibility for the war on the US and not on Iraq.
According to the poll, 74 per cent do not believe that Chirac went too far in his opposition to the US, something that has worried those concerned at future European relations with the United States, with 25 per cent of those questioned saying that they support Iraq in the conflict.
The poll also reveals French worries regarding the duration and aftermath of the conflict, with 72 per cent saying that the UN should be given responsibility for post-war reconstruction in Iraq and not the US or UK, and 66 per cent saying that France should contribute financially to Iraqi reconstruction.
Chirac, reelected president one year ago in a campaign marked by the unprecedented electoral success of the extreme-right National Front Party, has often been seen as the incarnation of France's elite political class, his career taking him from a minor cabinet role in the government of Georges Pompidou in 1962 to prime minister in 1974, president of the RPR Party in 1976, the party of the French establishment, mayor of Paris for two decades from 1977 to 1995, prime minister for a second time in 1986 and finally president in 1995.
In the 2002 French presidential elections Chirac scored 19.88 per cent, the lowest on record for an incumbent candidate, in the first round of voting in a surprise result that saw the Socialist Party candidate and then Prime Minister Lionel Jospin coming in third behind National Front leader Jean-Marie Le Pen, who had led a racist and xenophobic campaign.
Chirac's support rallied for the second round held one week later, scoring 82.06 per cent of the vote, the highest ever recorded in France and eclipsing the 58.21 per cent won by Georges Pompidou in the 1969 elections or the 55.20 per cent gained by General de Gaulle, founder of the French Fifth Republic, in 1965.
Massive demonstrations across France in the interim against Le Pen's National Front, marked by a strong presence of young people and of French people of Arab origin, helped deliver Chirac's reelection in a result read as a vote for the values of the French Republic and against the extreme right rather than as a genuine opting for Chirac and the parliamentary right.
However, in the wake of France's resistance to US pressure for a second UN Security Council resolution authorising war against Iraq, Chirac announcing on 10 March that France would use its veto "whatever the circumstances, since there is no necessity to go to war to bring about the disarmament of Iraq", the French president's popularity has continued to rise, with French public and politicians being nearly unanimous in their support for France's position and their condemnation of the US-led war.
In a statement following US President George W Bush's 17 March ultimatum to Iraqi President Saddam Hussein to leave Iraq or face war within 48 hours, France said that the ultimatum "was contrary both to the will of the Security Council and to that of the international community, both of which wish to see the disarmament of Iraq continue in accordance with Security Council Resolution 1441".
Reacting to the onset of war despite French efforts to prevent it, Chirac expressed his "regret at the actions being undertaken without the authorisation of the United Nations", adding that France "had made every effort to argue that the necessary disarmament of Iraq could be obtained by peaceful means".
In the first major policy speech made by a French politician since the war began, French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin told an audience at London's International Institute for Strategic Studies last Thursday that the French position was the result of "a certain idea of collective security and a certain vision of the world".
France had a further worry, de Villepin said. "How can we not see" in the present crisis "the risk of a growing lack of understanding between peoples, which could result in a clash of cultures? Is this not the challenge of our time", and is it not "up to us to bring the necessary responses, nourishing the sprit of dialogue and respect between peoples", he asked.
France, de Villepin said, would continue to insist that the UN play the fullest possible role in the reconstruction of Iraq after the end of hostilities, and it would resist any attempts by the US to install an American administration in post- war Iraq, echoing comments made by Chirac at an earlier European Union heads of state and of government meeting in the Belgian capital Brussels.
"No state today can set itself up as the world's policeman," de Villepin said. "It is in everyone's interests, including those of the American and British troops, to see a UN administration in Iraq. It is absolutely crucial that in the eyes of the Iraqis and in those of the rest of the world responsibility is given to a legitimate authority, such as the United Nations. Tomorrow's Iraq must not be thought of as some kind of Eldorado" to be divided up among the victorious powers.
Last weekend, 18,000 people marched in Paris against the US-led war on Iraq, down from the 90,000 on 22 March, in a demonstration marked by the strong presence of young people and of representatives of France's Arab and immigrant populations.
While the numbers of those marching has declined from figures recorded before the war started or immediately following its start, French public opinion and the media continue to condemn the US-led war, with the French government insisting on the need for a UN administration in post-war Iraq and the French business community protesting US plans to award reconstruction contracts exclusively to American contractors.
Reports last week revealed that USAID, the US overseas development administration, had already signed a contract with Stevedoring Services of America for the post-war reconstruction of the Iraqi port of Umm Qasr, without inviting foreign tenders. Further contracts have been given to the US company International Resources Group and to Kellog, Brown and Root, a subsidiary of the Halliburton, of which US Vice- President Dick Cheney was vice-president until 2000.
Representatives of MEDEF, the French association of company directors, have already begun to protest the apparent "marginalisation" of France in the awarding of post-war reconstruction contracts.
Since 1996 France has been one of Iraq's largest trading partners, French technology company Alcatel having agreed a deal to renovate Iraq's telephone system, which the company had originally installed, before the outbreak of hostilities, and French automobile manufacturers Peugeot and Renault having emerged as major suppliers to the Iraqi market.
Should the US decide to award Iraqi reconstruction contracts solely to American contractors following the end of hostilities, major contracts, such as those awarded to France in the 1980s for Baghdad's water supply or for its airport, would be out of French hands.
