FRANCE: President Jacques Chirac yesterday broadcast a declaration in the hope of "calming down" the passions unleashed by a law requiring schools to teach "the positive role" of French colonialism.
On November 29th, Mr Chirac's right-wing UMP party missed an opportunity to rescind article 4 of the Law of February 23rd, 2005. The article infuriated French historians, caused Algiers to delay a friendship treaty with Paris and provoked demonstrations in the French West Indies which this week forced Nicolas Sarkozy to cancel the first visit there by an interior minister since 1982.
France "must be proud of her history", Mr Chirac noted. "She has known moments of light, and darker moments. It is a heritage that we must assume in its entirety. . . in the respect of. . . memories that are sometimes wounded and which for many of our compatriots comprise a part of their identity. . .
"It doesn't take much for history to become a factor of division, for passions to be exacerbated, for the wounds of the past to be reopened," Mr Chirac said.
Repeating almost verbatim the words of prime minister Dominique de Villepin, Mr Chirac said: "In the Republic, there is no official history. It is not up to the law to write history. The writing of history is the business of historians." He did not explain why he allowed his majority to draft and vote the law on France's colonial history.
Instead of calling for the abrogation of article 4, as many are demanding, Mr Chirac tried an old ploy: he created a commission. The speaker of the National Assembly, the Chirac loyalist Jean-Louis Debré, is to head "a pluralist mission to evaluate the action of parliament in the fields of memory and history" within three months.
Socialist politicians seeking the 2007 presidential nomination are engaging in a free-for-all competition to lambast article 4.
Dominique Strauss-Kahn called the text "an absolute scandal". Jack Lang has posted a petition "for the respect of memory and truth" on his internet site.