|
Sarkozy breaking new ground
28/08/2007 16:46 - (SA)
Paris - President Nicolas Sarkozy has broken new ground in French diplomacy by taking a pro-American stance and resorting to tough talks on Iran, Russia and China, French newspapers commented on Tuesday.
French editorialists said Sarkozy had outlined a shift from his predecessor Jacques Chirac in his first major foreign policy address delivered on Monday at a conference of ambassadors in Paris.
"What is new is that France no longer positions itself as a rival to the United States," wrote the rightwing Le Figaro.
"She is no longer caught in the ill-suited role of being a rallying point for all those who oppose America."
Sarkozy in his speech underscored the importance of the Franco-American friendship and warned that Iran's nuclear programme was the most serious crisis facing the world today.
"French diplomacy takes on a new tone with Sarkozy" wrote the authoritative Le Monde daily, noting that the president had taken a decidedly "more Atlanticist" tone with his criticism of Russia and China than Chirac.
Sarkozy said Russia was imposing itself on the international scene by using its oil and gas wealth with "brutality" and said this was unbecoming of a "great power".
"China, which is engaged in the most impressive renaissance in the history of humanity, is transforming its insatiable quest for raw materials into a strategy of domination, in particular in Africa," said Sarkozy.
The leftwing Liberation newspaper said Sarkozy had gone on the "offensive" with his address, the first on foreign policy since he took over from Chirac in May.
"The president in this area also marked a sort of break" with Chirac, wrote Liberation. "It was mostly in the choice of words, using rather harsh qualifiers on Russia and China and a shock formula on the Iranian nuclear issue."
Sarkozy said that a diplomatic push to convince Iran to abandon its nuclear ambitions was the only alternative to a "catastrophic" outcome that he described as "an Iranian bomb or bombing Iran".
"It was the first time that a European head of state has explained in such explicit terms the dilemma that we will be facing if the peaceful attempts to persuade Tehran fail," Francois Heisbourg, chairperson of the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, was quoted as saying in Liberation.
- AFP
|
News
.jpg)
