Imagine, a luminary in the opposition party in America turns down an opportunity to be photographed with the hottest political property in France since Édith Cresson. Imagine, American Democrats actually have drawn a line somewhere that someone can cross. Imagine, Ségolène Royal has crossed it.

Imagine all that.

It overtaxes the imagination. Events have transpired to spare the imagination undue strain.

SÉGOLÈNE POSTPONES US TOUR AFTER HILLARY SNUB

PARIS December 18, 2006 (Telegraph) - Ségolène Royal, the French Socialist presidential candidate, postponed a "triumphant" US tour planned for this week after Hillary Clinton declined to meet her, it was claimed yesterday.

HILLARY TAKES A PASS
Ségo: "I Didn't Want To Meet Her Anyway."

... An unnamed advisor to Mrs Clinton told the newspaper Le Parisien that appearing next to a French Socialist who recently met an official of the Hizbollah movement in Lebanon could be construed as condoning the beliefs of the militant Shia group. The Democrats also have little in common with French Socialism, which supports massive state intervention, a huge civil service, and regularly lambasts "US world hegemony".

But the main problem, said the advisor, stemmed from Miss Royal's association with the Hizbollah official, who denounced the "unlimited dementia of the American administration" and likened Israel's foreign policy to "Nazism".

... "Hillary, whose investiture is far from assured, is very vigilant and cannot afford the slightest false move. She does not want to be associated with Royal's recent remarks. It would not be good for her image," said the advisor.

The Socialist party spokesman Julien Dray said that not enough people were available for Miss Royal's roadshow, and she did not intend to go to the US as a "tourist".

Oh! M. Dray makes clear Mlle. Royal cannot be snubbed. It is she who does the snubbing.

However, Jacques [sic] Lang, her special advisor, confirmed that meetings had been scheduled with Kofi Annan and Ban ki-Moon, his successor as the United Nations Secretary General, as well as the Democrat presidential hopeful Barack Obama and the former US president Bill Clinton.

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