FRANCE: President Jacques Chirac's entourage has reacted angrily to the publication yesterday of a book by Prime Minister Lionel Jospin, saying it proves Mr Jospin's lack of respect and his "foul character".
In The Time to Reply, a 281- page conversation with the political scientist Alain Duhamel, Mr Jospin gives a vague overview of his goals should he be elected president on May 5th. Criticising Mr Chirac, he is more precise. Mr Jospin insists he has nothing against Mr Chirac personally. "But more important than the personal relations between leaders are the relations that each maintains with the meaning of the state, the general interest, truth and responsibility. In this regard . . . Jacques Chirac is capable of twisting texts and things in the direction that suits him. . . You cannot just pile up promises, pile up contradictory speeches. That is clearly the reproach that I make against the outgoing President."
His appraisal of Mr Chirac's seven-year term is devastating.
"For two years we had an unfaithful presidency, and for five years, a passive presidency," he says. "Unfaithful" because Mr Chirac reneged on his promise to heal France's "social fracture"; "passive" because "cohabitation" with Mr Jospin reduced his role to protocol. Alluding to Mr Chirac's refusal to speak to magistrates investigating corruption and his tough stance on crime, Mr Jospin notes that he "demanded impunity at the same time his friends proclaimed zero tolerance!" The Prime Minister says the President may have believed in a plot against him by French judges. "He even wanted us to 'protect' him, in a way, from what he thought was 'dysfunctional' justice."
Mr Jospin sheds little light on his 25 years as a Trotskyist, "an intellectual adventure that has to do with my personal construction, to which I attribute the virtue of preserving me from the risks of conformity." This "secret quest" was, he says, based on hope which he later saw as "Messianic".
He describes his relations with the US as more consistent than Mr Chirac's. "I've often seen the President go from summary judgements about the US to proclamations of solidarity."
Mr Jospin's Foreign Minister, Mr Hubert Védrine, reiterated criticism of the US in an interview with Libération, singling out US opposition to the Kyoto Treaty, setting up an international court of justice and disarmament treaties, and US "abuse" of its Security Council veto on Middle East questions.
Mr Chirac said he regretted "commentaries of a polemical nature" and insisted France and the US follow "exactly the same line" in the "war against terrorism".