A FRENCH CALL FOR A NEW DAY WITH U.S.

This promising headline sits atop an IHT interview with French foreign minister Michel Barnier. The new day being called for turns out to be the old day of French complaints, French lecturing, French posturing, styled in a smarmy outspokenness that is M. Barnier's alone. But M. Barnier promises more of this then ever before. Sigh.

Michel Barnier, the French foreign minister, is calling for a "new relationship" with the United States and says its first test will be the capacity of President George W. Bush and his European allies to advance a Middle East peace within the next six months.

France, he added, has no interest in looking back on a bitter season in French-American ties but seeks a new relationship that Barnier would seek to forge by visiting the United States "every three to four months" to meet with administration officials, members of Congress and others.

His plan to make frequent visits to the United States reflects the fact that "we need more political dialogue - we need to talk more," Barnier said.

Apparently there are vast stretches of open calendar in the Quai d'Orsay appointments book.

The Bush administration should reorient its priorities in the Middle East, Barnier suggested, speaking two days before an election expected to install Mahmoud Abbas as the new Palestinian leader. The minister criticized "this idea in Washington" that in the Middle East "there should be a movement of reform, of democracy, and that those who speak of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict are looking for reasons to delay the process of reform."

Not so, the minister insisted. "I say there is no reform and no democracy in this great region if we do not make peace," he said. "Peace is an objective precondition. Peace between Israelis and Palestinians is needed to advance the movement George Bush wants."

Huh? Think about this a minute. If peace is a precondition, what stands guarantor to the peace? The Palestinians time and again have shown they can guarantee no such peace because they have been politically neutered by the gangsters and terrorists and opportunists that live off their misery. Of course democratic reforms would give the Palestinians the chance to succeed or fail by their own political choices. But since M. Barnier's precondition cannot be secured just forget about reform and democracy.

Later M. Barnier goes on:

"We think that to fight terrorism correctly, you also have to fight the ground in which it grows," he said. That ground, the minister suggested, was poverty and injustice.

"A safer world and a freer world will first be a more just world," Barnier said. "There we have our differences." He did not elaborate on how broader social justice should be achieved.

Poverty. Terrorism. Poverty and terrorism. The French love big gauzy notions with big cinematic themes. The connection between poverty and terrorism is forever being discredited. To no avail. The Symbionese Liberation Army, the Japanese Red Army, Baader-Meinhof Gang, all these terrorist groups sprang from the richest countries of the world. Mr. bin Laden was born into money, made money, and now uses his money to bankroll the bad boys of al Quaeda. The Pali mafia chokes on the world's foreign aid largesse, spending it on tech start-ups, illegal arms, bowling alleys -- just about everything but the Palestinian people. Whatever the place of poverty in the schema of different terrorist groups, poverty is simply not seminal to terrorism.

The file of terrorist groups may be recruited from the poor and disaffected but the rank are typically middle-class with radical educations and messiah complexes who have read a few books and hit on the idea that cutting throats will establish a world of peace and prosperity. What all terrorists have in common is that they are politically regressive. Power, money, and privilege are all concentrated among the rank and not distributed down the file. However, every terrorist, whether of the rank or the file, with the means and will to kill reserves to himself power and privilege where he meets up with the lawful polity. Social reform movements that successfully advanced the cause of the poor such as those led by Mahatma Ghandi and Martin Luther King, Jr., with well-defined goals and non-violent methods, never come up where poverty is used to explain away terrorism.

But without the poverty prop, dreamy politicians like M. Barnier must consider their failed policies and their lack of political will, if not at the root of terrorism, as the means by which terroism flourishes. For example, the bright French idea in Iraq of folding terrorists -- many of whom are non-nationals -- into the legitimate political processes of Iraq.

Next M. Barnier trots out Jack's pitiful hobbyhorse:

[T]he world must be organized not "around a single pillar but several pillars," among them the United States, China, Russia and the European Union.

The EU should be recognized as a steadfast "ally of the Americans," he said, adding: "An alliance does not mean allegiance. It should mean partnership."

He was asked if an alliance meant allegiance at moments of crisis like the Iraq war. "It is never allegiance," Barnier said, his pale blue eyes assuming a steely hue. "An alliance is a partnership based on mutual respect."

The excitement is palpable here at Pave in anticipation of French reciprocity!

When it was put to him that the European Union, which has 25 member nations, was now seen in some conservative circles in Washington as a potential rival whose further integration may not be in the U.S. interest, Barnier retorted that the Union would continue to grow regardless of the Bush administration's views [!].

"We are going to continue, whether it is pleasing or not," Barnier said. "We are going to continue because it is in the interest of Europeans and Americans to have an ally that is credible, strong and loyal." To be strong, he added, Europe needs "an autonomous and complementary defense within the framework of NATO, one that respects alliances but is capable of autonomy."

He said it was a "mistake, an error of analysis" for the Bush administration to try to divide the Continent into an "Old Europe," principally France and Germany, and a new, more pro-American Europe including countries like Poland.

If we remember correctly it is France and Germany that have set themselves apart as the exceptions among EU peers, holding invite-only just-us summits, flouting member rules of their own design and proscribing dissents to the Franco-German Weltanschauung. Mr. Rumsfeld merely dared give their efforts a name.

The Bush administration, which Barnier described as "pragmatic and lucid," should recognize that "the countries joining the European Union will progressively and inevitably have a European reflex."

"Americans must understand that it is in their interest that Europe get organized and have an autonomy," he said. "It's the price to pay for an effective alliance. The alliance between Europeans and Americans must be balanced."

This is a favorite French trick, slap down an argument never advanced. Neither Mr. Bush nor his administration has ever argued against a strong European Union. Perhaps M. Barnier has made "an error of analysis" mistaking Mr. Bush's "pragmatic and lucid" expectations of a fractious Union and its top-heavy non-performers as an American desire to continue coddling spoiled Europa. The Lisbon Strategy to succeed needs something on the order of supernatural intervention. EU defense spending remains chronically deficient and wholly inadequate to fund big plans for the European Rapid Reaction Force (ERRF) -- a typical Europa "talk" project, in discussion since 2000.

Asked if France, now a medium-sized power, had too many pretensions on the world stage, Barnier replied: "We don't have pretensions. We have ambitions. We have ideas."

Misplaced ambitions. Dopey ideas. Oh, surely this is pretentious.

"Sometimes we are arrogant," he continued. "But others are, too, no? It's not an excuse, I know."

A French specialty, the tu quoque and a little shrug, by which France -- and everyone else -- slips the hook because, folks, it is an imperfect world.

And finally, back on planet earth. M. Barnier delivers up France's conflicted and difficult position:

But were France's ambitions not out of all proportion to its power? "That is why we are Europeans," Barnier said. "Our ambitions must be shared. I am a passionate patriot, passionate Frenchman and passionate European."

Showing his sober streak, the minister added: "Americans can count alone, the Chinese can count alone, the Russians can count alone, but we do not count alone. We have to be together. The French know that."

In summary, France's new day with America consists of America following a number of French prescriptions. France for her part will continue to instruct America.

We recommend the full read.

Yes, France continues to instruct EVERYONE. The bureau of the Moroccan house of representatives and all parliamentary groups strongly rejected allegations mentioned in a story published by French Le Monde daily questioning the Morocco-US FTA approval procedures.

In a statement released this Thursday, the House "strongly rejects erroneous remarks, misplaced allusions and non-professional comments" of "Le Monde" article, of January 8, on the approval procedure of the Free Trade Agreement signed last June between Morocco and the USA.

The story was titled "Moroccan parliament ratifies without reading key agreement."
The statement notes the "malevolent title" at a time the Moroccan parliament was starting to look into the agreement, insisting that the procedure was taking place in the strict observance of the institutional procedures in force.

It also notes that the French publication has "invited the French public opinion to a Moroccan-Moroccan debate over an agreement concluded with a third country."

How dare the sovereign nation of Morocco make a trade agreement with the US without the prior approval of France