Sarkozy Makes French Amends in Washington
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
Tighter European economic sanctions against Iran, a more prominent role for France in Afghanistan, support for an independent Kosovo, and the gradual return of France to the command structure of NATO are expected to result from the first state visit of President Sarkozy to Washington tomorrow.
Mr. Sarkozy is expected to make rapid amends for his Gaullist party’s five decades of hostility to America this week with a visit to President Bush that includes a state dinner at the White House tomorrow, followed by lunch with the president, a visit to George Washington’s home at Mount Vernon, and an address to the joint houses of Congress on Wednesday.
Mr. Sarkozy will award French military decorations to six American World War II veterans of the Allied invasion of Europe in 1944, and will meet with the mayor of Washington and representatives of the main American Jewish organizations.
The lavish ceremonial welcome for Mr. Sarkozy will be accompanied by a much predicted breakthrough in American-French relations, as President Bush welcomes to Washington the man known in France as “Sarkozy l’Americain,” the first pro-American president of France in 40 years.
The two presidents intend to consolidate the friendship established in the summer, when the recently elected Mr. Sarkozy, vacationing in New Hampshire, went fishing with the president in Maine. The two men are expected to show a unity of purpose against those countries France now acknowledges to be common enemies.
As the executive director of the German Marshall Fund’s Transatlantic Center in Brussels, Ronald D. Asmus, wrote in the Washington Post last week, Mr. Sarkozy “is the first French president in decades who likes America and does not seek to demonize for political purposes the U.S. capitalist system or our foreign policy.”
In his address to Congress, Mr. Sarkozy is expected to conspicuously reject the hostility against America expressed by President de Gaulle and his successors. As the undersecretary of State for political affairs, Nicholas Burns, said in a carefully time lecture at the American University in Paris last week, “The Franco-American friendship and Alliance is secure and strong and vital once again. We are most definitely entering a dynamic new era in U.S.-France relations.”
Mr. Sarkozy has expressed a keen interest in returning France to the top table in NATO affairs and abandoning de Gaulle’s partial withdrawal in 1966 from the Integrated Military Command Structure of the organization. Mr. Bush will welcome the development.
Mr. Bush will also note with approval France’s efforts to bolster the fighting against the Taliban and Al Qaeda forces in Afghanistan, which include Mr. Sarkozy’s recent dispatch of an additional 50 soldiers to mentor and train Afghan troops to support NATO forces in southern Afghanistan.
But President Bush is also expected to press Mr. Sarkozy to make good on his intentions about returning to be a full active member of NATO by sending French forces to fight in Afghanistan. At present, the military burden against remnants of the Taliban and Al Qaeda in the south and east of the country is being shouldered predominantly by American, British, Canadian, and Dutch troops.
With tougher U.N. sanctions on Iran hampered by the veto power of Russia and China in the Security Council, Mr. Bush will encourage Mr. Sarkozy to back his European partners, led by Britain, who want to ensure increased economic sanctions against the mullahs’ regime to encourage it to halt its nuclear weapons program and stop its support for terrorist groups such as Hezbollah, Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and the Taliban.
There is less likelihood of a change in French policy on Iraq, where France has repeatedly declined to help the “coalition of the willing.” But President Bush is expected to reiterate the American view that, as Mr. Burns put it, “the Iraqi people deserve help, and we all must act in whatever ways we can to support them.”
Even a token gesture to help the allied forces in Iraq will be greeted by Mr. Bush as a concrete sign that France’s antipathy towards America has been abandoned once and for all.
Mr. Bush will welcome Mr. Sarkozy’s leadership in trying to foster international support for the Serbian province of Kosovo’s ambition to become an independent state in the face of opposition from Belgrade. Other subjects to be debated include the Israel-Palestinian Arab dispute, the occupation of South Lebanon by French and other U.N. forces, and climate change.
The two presidents will also discuss China’s hampering of western efforts to put to an end to the genocide in Darfur and isolate the tyrannical regime in Burma ahead of Mr. Sarkozy’s meeting with the Chinese communist leadership in Beijing next month. Mr. Sarkozy is expected to back tougher European Union sanctions against Burma.
The earnestness of Mr. Sarkozy’s determination to make up for decades of French opposition to America can be seen by the weight of his Washington contingent. Among those accompanying him are his foreign minister Bernard Kouchner, his treasury minister Christine Lagarde, his justice chief Rachida Dati, his human rights minister Rowed Yade, and the president of the French National Assembly, Bernard Accoyer.
The visit to Mount Vernon by Mr. Sarkozy is especially symbolic, coming as it does 250 years from the birth of the Marquis de Lafayette, the French officer who came to America to help fight the British during the American Revolution and formed such a warm lifelong friendship with Washington that he named his son George Washington Lafayette.