NOTHING seems to go right for President Chirac these days. First his centre- right coalition was slaughtered in parliamentary elections he called nearly a year early. Then, at the weekend, he lost control of the party he founded.
Today and tomorrow, at the NATO summit in Madrid, he will witness the end of his December 1995 attempt to bring France back into NATO's integrated military command after a 30-year absence.
When Mr Chirac announced 18 months ago that the French defence minister and chief of staff would attend the NATO council of ministers and military committee meetings, his motive was not so much to bring France back under US orders as it was to entice other members into a "European pillar" of NATO. If "Europeanisation" succeeded France would return to all levels of the command structure.
At first the initiative seemed to bear fruit. At the June 1996 NATO foreign ministers meeting in Berlin the principle of a European security and defence identity within NATO was approved. In tandem with Britain and Germany, France wrested two concessions from reluctant US generals: the position of deputy Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR) would be reserved for a European.
Secondly, when European interests were at stake, for example in Bosnia, the deputy SACEUR might (with US approval) command entirely European combined joint task forces.
The results of the Madrid summit are a foregone conclusion, and Mr Chirac is not likely to enjoy it. His office and that of his Prime Minister, Mr Lionel Jospin, last week issued a joint statement announcing that "France considers the conditions it laid down for a re-examination of her relations with the military structures of NATO are not present".
The alliance will admit three new members, rather than the five which France, Italy, Canada and others wanted. And, French sources agree, the "Europeanisation" of NATO will be a dead letter.
The French president had posed three conditions for a return to the integrated command: an agreement between NATO and Russia on their future relations; that the alliance's southern command in Naples be given for the first time to a European; and that Romania and Slovenia be allowed to join along with Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic.
Mr Chirac had also hoped that President Yeltsin would attend the meeting, but the Russian leader opted instead to go on holiday.
Only one of Mr Chirac's wishes was fulfilled. NATO and Russia signed a "founding act on mutual relations" in Paris on May 27th. However, Washington last month rejected the French president's other conditions.
"The Americans made it impossible to reach any compromise in Madrid," Mr Franois Heisbourg, a defence analyst who is close to the governing Socialist Party, said. "They hit us with a double whammy. One day the US Secretary of Defence, Mr William Cohen announced that the issue of the southern command had been resolved in the US's favour. The next day the Deputy Secretary of State, Mr Strobej Talbott issued his diktat: there would be three countries invited to join, and three countries only."
What the French view as US intransigence and hegemony has proved a small blessing in domestic political terms, saving Mr Chirac and Mr Jospin from a politically damaging confrontation. However awkward they find their cohabitation, the French public likes it. Both men are rising in opinion polls; both stand to lose if they are seen to quarrel. And quarrel they would have, since the French constitution is vague on whether the president or prime minister has ultimate responsibility for foreign and defence policy.
Mr Jospin's Socialists had objected to Mr Chirac's plans to reintegrate France in the NATO command on the grounds that neither France nor Europe would gains anything from it, and that it would "sacrifice our autonomy of decision". When Mr Chirac's negotiations with the US floundered, the Socialists said they would he content to watch him wriggle out of the trap he had constructed.
Mr Chirac will fly home tomorrow night, able to say he has stood up to the US - always a popular move in France. The biggest casualty will be the European defence identity he dreamed of.
Hungary yesterday made a last-minute appeal to the summit to include Romania and Slovenia in the first enlargement wave.
"I think a longer list could contribute to the stability and security in the region and the accession of these two countries would certainly contribute to bilateral relations," the Foreign Minister, Mr Laszlo Kovacs, said.
