The French government said yesterday that it would seek a "new alliance" with whomever won the US presidential election next week. A diplomatic chill has characterised exchanges between Paris and Washington over the past two years as a result of French opposition to the war in Iraq. But the French foreign minister, Michel Barnier, said that the two countries needed to forge a new alliance. This alliance "must be based on mutual respect, which is not allegiance", he said.
Mr Barnier declined to express a preference between President George W Bush and his Democrat rival, Senator John Kerry. His brief remarks on French television indicated both the importance Paris attached to building a better understanding with America, and the likely limitations of any immediate improvement. Relations between President Jacques Chirac and Mr Bush in particular have been described as beyond repair. A book by two French journalists, published earlier this month, claimed that the French president's telephone calls were regularly bugged by the CIA. The Left-wing newspaper Libération yesterday said that victory for Mr Bush would maintain America as an arrogant, imperialistic super-power guided by "a handful of ideologues hungry for adventure but deaf to the planet". Putting Mr Kerry in the White House would "perhaps" mean a more multilateral approach. A Kerry win would be overwhelmingly welcomed in France, even though he often seems at pains to play down his French connections: fluency in the language, family links and memories of childhood summers in France. |