France is proud of Chirac's stance on trying to avert war

FRANCE: All France seemed to bask in pride and self-satisfaction yesterday, after President Jacques Chirac confirmed that "whatever the circumstances, France will vote No," to a UN Security Council resolution authorising war against Iraq.

Though France has resisted the Bush administration for six months, a certain ambiguity remained. It needed Mr Chirac's pronouncement on prime-time television to remove all doubt: President George Bush will not obtain a UN mandate for war, thanks to French determination.

Rarely if ever has there been such unanimous praise for a French leader. Ms Marie-George Buffet, the head of the Communist Party, said Mr Chirac's position was "just, dignified and in conformity with the will of our people".

The former left-wing minister Mr Jean-Pierre Chevenement said Mr Chirac "defends France's universal vocation". Mr Jean-Marc Ayrault, the head of the Socialist group in the National Assembly, called Mr Chirac "the spokesman for an entire country which rejects recourse to preventive war".

If the Left was laudatory, the Right - with the exception of a handful of Atlanticist deputies worried about the state of Franco-American relations - went beyond effusive.

"Chirac; Soldier for Peace" was the title of an article in the conservative daily Le Figaro. "Never in his political career has Jacques Chirac been so at ease in his role as white knight of peace, as champion of all the oppressed of the earth, but also defender of a multi-polar world," Ms Anne Fulda wrote, adding that in the battle at the UN Mr Chirac "has at last found the opportunity to reveal his true self".

Liberation, a left-wing daily, called Mr Chirac's stand on Iraq "a godsend to enter into history". Mr Chirac speaks of morality, the respect of international law and dialogue between cultures, it noted. It recounted his almost daily telephone calls to the Russian and German leaders to preserve their alliance in the Iraq crisis, and quoted the former Foreign Minister Mr Hubert Vedrine: ["Mr Chirac] is one of the few world leaders who knows the five or six people who count in about one hundred countries."

Le Monde praised Mr Chirac's firmness and conciliatory tone towards Washington, saying his objective "is not only noble, it is judicious". If a cloud hangs over France's euphoria, it is the near certainty that war will occur anyway, and that France's relations with the US will suffer.

Though Mr Chirac claimed tensions with the US were only "skin-deep", he was contradicted by the leader of his own political party, Mr Alain Juppe, who spoke of "deep differences with this administration".

Mr Chirac might have preferred to forego praise from the Libyan leader Col Muammar Gadafy, who once played the hate figure role now embodied by President Saddam Hussein.

"Jacques Chirac must hang on, and all other countries will follow in his footsteps," Col Gadafy told Le Figaro. Though the US tried to kill Col Gadafy and the UN imposed sanctions on Libya for its suspected involvement in the bombing of two civilian airlines, Le Figaro now describes him as "an old sage".

Perhaps Paris hopes President Saddam can be similarly transformed. In one of the less convincing moments of his television appearance, Mr Chirac implied that "regime change" could be achieved through weapons inspections. "Disarmament means the end of the regime," he said. "It pre-supposes a transparency in which dictatorships do not survive."