Instead, he has had to cope with tabloid headlines gleefully denouncing his President as a "worm" and his compatriots as "cheese-eating surrender monkeys".If that were all, the whole sorry saga could be dismissed, as it is with eminent good grace by the ambassador, as "not important".Tabloid headlines, however, were almost the least of it Through no fault of his own, M. Errera has found himself negotiating one of the most serious rifts to have opened between Britain and France for decades. Worse, it is a rift that has exposed a fault-line threatening the whole construct of international relations. So when you start talking about Britain, France and Iraq, you find yourself all too soon talking about Europe, transatlantic relations and the world.Consummate diplomat that he is, M Errera prefers to look forward rather than back.
"Of course, it is important to have the history right," he says, when I ask about the initial rift, at the UN Security Council in March, "but it is not our intention to dwell on this ... Too many negative things have been said."He launches, none the less, into a detailed recitation of how and why the French – and not only the French, he adds almost shyly – found themselves on the opposite side from the British and Americans. He evinces regret that war was not avoided, but not the slightest hint that France would do anything differently if it faced the same choice again."The stakes were high, so our voice had to be strong. And we are proud to have taken the position we did; we were consistent from first to last in defending the principles we believed in," he says. "As a permanent member, it was incumbent on us to defend our position and take responsibility on a matter of peace and war.
If push had come to shove and there had been a resolution authorising war and we had just kept silent, it would not have been fair to let this responsibility fall on other countries."France had hoped, M. Errera says, that the UN weapons inspection regime, so painstakingly restored last autumn, would become a model of how to deal with one of the big issues of the future, the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction worldwide. "We wanted to deal with it in a legitimate, collective, multilateral way." The closest he came to criticising US and British conduct was to add: "We have to have rules, international rules, decided in common and applicable to all."As to France's priorities for an Iraq policy now, they start with meeting the humanitarian needs of the Iraqi people. Security and stability come next, then economic and political reconstruction.
But two absolute essentials will determine France's response to the new US-British resolution tabled at the Security Council last Friday. The disarmament of Iraq must be established and validated by "international authority" and any new arrangement for administering Iraq must have legitimacy. Both these elements lay at the heart of what separated the countries that supported the war from those that opposed it, and they meant a "central role for the UN".Would France be prepared to join a multinational peace-keeping force? "Not now We'll have to see how the situation develops. There is no clarity, either from the US or from Britain, and they are the ones on the ground." However, he stresses that France would take a "pragmatic and constructive" approach to this week's discussions at the UN.The fact that the US and Britain went to war without UN authorisation "can't be portrayed as a failure of the UN", M Errera says. He also vigorously contests the accusation that, in opposing the US and Britain, France acted out of self-interest "There are principles that are not negotiable ... And you don't do it only for your national interests, but for principle That is any country's right .. This is something that goes with democracy. Democracy within states also means democracy between states."He clearly meant that thought to apply as much to transatlantic relations as to relations within Europe – and to the perception that France and Britain have rather different visions for the European Union M.
