Assad gets red carpet as France seals new partnership

The Syrian President, Mr Hafez Al-Assad, strode down the red carpet of the neo-Renaissance reception hall to the tune of baroque flutes and oboes. When he reached the podium, the man known as the Lion of Damascus turned towards the audience of more than 500 to bask in the applause.

Perhaps he thought he was back home in Damascus, for green, black, red and white Syrian flags decked the hall and he was receiving the adulation to which he is accustomed. In a gesture well known to his subjects, the 67-year-old dictator raised both hands heavenward, then clasped them before him.

The speech delivered by Mr Jean Tiberi, the Mayor of Paris and a close ally of President Jacques Chirac, could have been written by one of Mr Assad's acolytes.

His guest was "one of the longest ruling and most influential Middle East leaders, a head of state who has known, through his pragmatism, his experience and his determination, how to give his country an eminent place on the international scene".

Mr Assad had been a "brilliant fighter pilot". Since seizing power 28 years ago, he had ensured the political stability of Syria, who owed her well-being to Mr Assad's "firm and lucid policy of national unity, to your demanding definition of Syrian sovereignty".

Mr Tiberi's honeyed words and the lavish reception given to the Syrian leader during his first state visit to France in 22 years were meant to assure him of French good intentions, and formally notify the US and Israel that the two countries' new "strategic partnership" is serious.

At the state dinner on Thursday night, Mr Chirac said he regretted that "despite the urgent necessity of moving forward" and "despite the commitments that were made", progress towards peace "seems to be stopping". He reiterated that the peace process must be based on "the principle of land for peace" - a principle the Israeli Prime Minister, Mr Benjamin Netanyahu, now rejects - and insisted that Israel return the Golan Heights to Syria.

Mr Assad was even more pessimistic. The Netanyahu government had "reduced the peace process to zero", he said. Yet he was receptive to the May 18th Franco-Egyptian proposal for a new Middle East peace conference - an initiative that was derided by Mr Netanyahu as "farce".

France and Syria have a certain arrogance in common. "Like France, Syria feels itself the guardian of an age-old destiny," Mayor Tiberi said yesterday . In more practical terms, that means that France feels an irresistible urge to lead Europe, while Syria wants to speak for all Arabs.

President Assad realised his boat was sinking when the Soviet Union disintegrated. So he joined the US-led coalition against Iraq after its August 1990 invasion of Kuwait, then sent his ministers to the Madrid peace conference in October 1991. Last February, Mr Assad watched President Chirac prevent a US attack on Iraq, and he was impressed. Could France, he wonders, replace the former Soviet Union as Syria's protector? At a time when the US is by its own admission on the verge of abandoning the peace process in exasperation with Mr Netanyahu, the Franco-Syrian honeymoon signals to Washington that Paris is eager to step into its Middle East preserve - and with better credentials than the Clinton administration's - as an "honest broker".

Mr Netanyahu has been alerted that with France standing by, he cannot steam-roll Damascus as he has Mr Arafat in their negotiations. The state visit was opposed by French Jewish groups, who objected to the date - the 56th anniversary of the `Vel d'Hiv' roundup of French Jews destined for Nazi death camps.

They also accuse Mr Assad of harbouring the Nazi war criminal Alois Brunner, who would be 86 years-old if he is still alive. President Chirac brought the Brunner case up with Mr Assad on Thursday evening, and has promised to pursue it further.

The former prime minister, Mr Laurent Fabius, and two of his ministers are to be tried for manslaughter after the 1985 contaminated-blood scandal that has led to the death of nearly 300 people. Mr Fabius, the speaker of the National Assembly and a Socialist Party executive, will be tried along with his social-affairs minister at the time, Ms Georgina Dufoix, and his former health minister, Mr Edmond Herve.

During a special court hearing in Paris yesterday three judges dropped charges of complicity to poison by the three ministers but rejected a recommendation by the public prosecutor that there was no case to answer. They said the ministers must face charges of involuntary homicide. No date was fixed for the hearing.