http://www.washingtontimes.com/world/20040630-120807-9389r.htm France Vetoes Afghan Mission By David R. Sands THE WASHINGTON TIMES Published June 30, 2004 France yesterday blocked a U.S.-backed plan to use a special NATO force to safeguard elections in Afghanistan this fall, despite a plea from Afghan leaders that the troops are badly needed. French President Jacques Chirac's veto of the plan on the second and final day of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's summit in Istanbul was the latest in a string of direct rebukes to President Bush in recent days and a sign that French-U.S. relations have not overcome the bitter divisions stemming from the Iraq war last year. The Afghanistan mission was vetoed despite a direct plea from Afghan President Hamid Karzai, who said continuing violence by Islamic fundamentalist forces in the country was a threat to the fledgling democratic government. "I would like you to please hurry, as NATO, to Afghanistan. Come sooner than September," said Mr. Karzai, who traveled to Istanbul to make his appeal. While President Bush in recent days has talked up trans-Atlantic unity and praised the early transfer of sovereignty in Iraq, Mr. Chirac has pointedly criticized U.S. positions on Afghanistan, Iraq, Turkey, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Even the leading French daily Le Monde said Mr. Chirac's remarks had earned him a reputation in Istanbul as a "killjoy." "We are friends [of the United States], we are allies," Mr. Chirac said in the Turkish city, "but we are not servants." The sharpest exchange -- and the most politically sensitive for France -- came over Mr. Bush's wholehearted endorsement earlier this week of Turkey's bid to join the European Union. The president was largely restating long-standing U.S. policy regarding Turkey, a major strategic ally, but Mr. Chirac took unusually strong exception. Mr. Bush "has nothing to say on this subject," Mr. Chirac said. "It is as if I were to tell the United States how to manage its relations with Mexico." The prospect of Turkey, an overwhelmingly Muslim nation, joining the European Union is a deeply divisive issue in France, which faces severe social strains from its large and growing Muslim minority population. Many in Western Europe fear the immigration and labor-market effects of Turkey's membership on the bloc. Mr. Chirac has said that he thinks eventual EU membership for Turkey is "desirable." But his own party, the center-right Union for a Popular Movement, campaigned in the recent European Parliament elections against Turkey's bid. Polls show that two-thirds of the French population opposes Turkish membership. Mr. Bush and senior U.S. officials have attempted to brush off some of Mr. Chirac's more provocative statements, focusing instead on improving U.S.-European ties since the end of the Iraq war. State Department spokesman J. Adam Ereli said U.S. and French leaders had "excellent meetings" at the Group of Eight summit in the U.S. state of Georgia, the U.S.-EU summit in Ireland, and the NATO gathering in Istanbul, all held this month. But U.S. officials in Istanbul, including Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, were seething privately over the French veto of an expanded NATO mission in Afghanistan and are contemplating referring the question to a separate NATO military council of which France is not a member. Mr. Karzai has implored the 26-nation alliance for more troops to provide security for critical national elections set for September. A NATO deployment now provides security for the capital, Kabul, and for a few outlying provinces. Elements of the ousted fundamentalist Taliban regime have vowed to undermine the vote. Two female workers engaged in voter registration were killed by a bomb in the provincial capital of Nangarhar on Saturday, the latest in a string of attacks on voters and election officials. "Tragically, we should expect that the terrorists and extremists will launch more such attacks to derail Afghanistan's historic elections," U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad told a news conference in Kabul yesterday. The Pentagon had supported a plan to use troops from the new NATO Response Force to provide extra security during the Afghan campaign season. But Mr. Chirac objected, saying the force, which has a strong French contingent, was formed to meet major security crises affecting the alliance. "It shouldn't be used in any old matter," he said in Istanbul. The French also took the lead in opposing U.S. and British efforts to establish a clear role for NATO inside Iraq now that sovereignty has been officially transferred to an Iraqi interim government. NATO leaders agreed to help train Iraqi security forces after France, Germany and other countries blocked more ambitious troop deployment ideas pushed by Washington and London. But, even then, Mr. Chirac insisted that the training proposal meant that only individual NATO countries, not the alliance as a whole, could provide such help. Sending troops into Iraq under NATO command would be "dangerous, counterproductive and misunderstood by the Iraqi people," he said. In Istanbul, he also repeated his criticism of the U.S. approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, saying American efforts to freeze Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat out of the peace process were misguided. Copyright © 2004 News World Communications, Inc. All rights reserved.
Its great that France has the guts to stand up to the imperialist yankee dogs and refuse any more support for the yankee dog puppet and elections. Free the Taliban!!!
They certainly did believe in fighting in the initial action to take out the Taliban. They flew the most combat air missions next to the United States. For the record, I think the French are dead wrong for vetoing this initiative. I also think that a better leader would have been able to persuade the French to join in on this. In fact I think any leader who hadn't so badly alienated everyone with the whole Iraq tragedy would have been able to bring them on board.
With Bush's past, there's probably nothing he could have done to persuade them. Someone else maybe could have, but I'm still not sure - it depends on their motivation. I can't tell if they are screwing over Afghanistan to spite the Bush administration, or if they are doing it for fear of a terrorist attack on their soil. Either way, I agree with yall. Punking out on the Afghans like this is some BS. You can potentially say that the Iraq aftermath is our responsibility, but they were involved in overthrowing the Taliban, so they have a responsibility to help right the ship here.
Chirac bears tons of responsibility. He sucks, and always has, as have most Gaullists. I've disliked him since the very beginning. But I'm able to separate my dislike for certain french politicians from dislike for France in general. Correct, and this includes Halliburton's French Subsidiaries, which happily plied their trade in Iraq in association with this program....where was Halliburton's CEO when this was happening?
looks like tony blair's tired of chirac's chenannigans too: http://news.independent.co.uk/europe/story.jsp?story=537001 -- Three-nation alliance trampled by 'rogue elephant' Chirac By Stephen Castle in The Hague and Andrew Grice 01 July 2004 Britain has concluded that its three-nation alliance with France and Germany is in effect over after a series of rows between Tony Blair and the French President, Jacques Chirac. Ministers believe President Chirac has become impossible to work with, and one government source described him as a "rogue elephant". The strategy of "trilateralism" has now given way to limited ad hoc co-operation on specific issues. Asked if the three-way approach was dead, one Blair aide replied, "yes". The Prime Minister's change of tack emerged as he accused France and Germany of watering down moves to ensure stability in Iraq and Afghanistan and warned that this week's Nato summit had not faced up to the threat of global terrorism. The triple alliance, designed to set the European Union's agenda after it expanded to 25 members in May, came under acute strain during a power struggle over the appointment of the European Commission president. Britain helped to block the Franco-German candidate, Belgium's premier, Guy Verhofstadt, and then to orchestrate the appointment of the Portuguese Prime Minister, Jose Manuel Barroso, a supporter of the US-led war in Iraq. At the Nato summit in Istanbul, M. Chirac watered down plans to increase Nato's presence in Iraq, criticised President George Bush over his support for Turkish membership of the EU, and objected to plans to deploy a Nato rapid reaction force to Afghanistan. The UK believes M. Chirac is lashing out from a position of weakness and is playing to a domestic audience. The Government sees the appointment of Mr Barroso as an important turning point because it proved the French and Germans could not push through their choice of Commission president. The end of trilateralism will come as a relief to many smaller European nations, which feared the three most powerful countries in the EU would set up a directoire. Jan Peter Balkenende, the Prime Minister of the Netherlands, which takes over the EU presidency today, said he did not oppose meetings of the three big nations but "it is very important that this is a matter of transparency, that they are open in their meetings and they are willing to communicate with others." In a Commons statement on the Istanbul summit, the Prime Minister said Nato was starting to understand the threat of terrorism, but added: "I worry that our response is still not sufficient to the scale of the challenge we face." Mr Blair questioned whether in "some quarters" in Nato there was the willingness and sense of urgency to meet the challenges it faced.
I should probably post something on this subject as well: France and Chirac are wrong IMO on this issue. However, I don't think we should EXPECT that France is going to play nice after all of the crap we pulled when the Iraq tragedy was about to begin. You had to have known there was going to be some backlash. This may not be the time or the place for the backlash but pretending it wasn't coming is ignorant. Reckless policy leads to alienating nations and GWB and his admin have no one to blame but themselves.
so since W invaded iRaq w/o chirac's permission, chirac is getting back by vetoing aid to afghanistan, which, if i recall one of the rocketmen's constant refrain (or was it a moon? perhaps a rocketman to the moon?) "flew more missions in afghanistan that any country not named america" but now finds it politically expedient to leave it's 700 troops in fortress kabul and let the rest of the country burn? so, what's their excuse for darfur?
