In the new alignment of the US, the UK, and France, the weakest link is, of course, France.
Socialists are not sold on Bernard Kouchner's line,* and Sarko the American is likely to prove as much of a divider** as Bush.
The French Left, however, need a vision thing. What kind of vision? Like this. The 21st century shall be a Eurasian century, in which European nations for the first time become Europe, under Franco-German leadership, a Europe that recognizes Islam as a Eurasian religion, an integral part of the Western Civilization that ought to have existed but never did. And this Europe shall have a foreign policy of their own, independent of Washington's, and come to terms with nuclear Iran, push the Jewish state from the sea to the river to give voting rights to Palestinians in the OPTs, and re-invite Turkey, a friend of Iran and Israel, in good faith to become a member of the European Union.
* <http://nogent-sur-oise.parti-socialiste.fr/2007/09/17/iran-declaration-de-bernard-kouchner/> 17 septembre 2007 IRAN : Déclaration de Bernard Kouchner
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Mohammad EL BARADEI, Directeur général de l'AIEA, déploie des efforts considérables pour tenter de trouver une solution à la crise, en mettant en place une méthode de solution des principaux points en litiges et fait état des signaux encourageants en ce sens.
Il ne voit pas aujourd'hui de danger clair concernant le programme nucléaire iranien. C'est le moment qu'ont choisi Nicolas SARKOZY et son ministre des Affaires Etrangères pour préconiser des sanctions hors Nations Unies et des préparatifs de guerre. La position de Nicolas SARKOZY, s'engageant à nouveau dans un scénario à l'Irakienne ne peut s'expliquer que par son alignement sur l'administration Bush. Cet alignement affaiblit l'autorité de l'ONU, met en danger la crédibilité, les intérêts et la sécurité de la France et est en contradiction avec les engagements de notre pays au Moyen-Orient.
Le Parti socialiste estime que l'AIEA doit mener jusqu'au bout la procédure de vérification du programme nucléaire iranien et la mise en œuvre d'un système rigoureux de contrôles internationaux. La France ne peut s'engager avec autant de légèreté dans des confrontations militaires dans une région si instable et mouvementée.
Le Parti socialiste demande qu'un débat soit engagé rapidement au Parlement sur ce dossier.
Communiqué du Secrétariat international
** <http://www.iht.com/bin/printfriendly.php?id=7926794> French transport to stand still in first major strikes against Sarkozy's reforms
The Associated Press Wednesday, October 17, 2007
PARIS: Strikes starting Wednesday night will disrupt flights to and from France, affect train routes in Europe and leave Paris virtually stripped of public transport — protests against President Nicolas Sarkozy's plans to trim special retirement packages for some workers.
The strikes, to last through Thursday, confront the popular president with his first real challenge since he took France's helm in May, and send him a clear message that deeper reforms could come at a cost.
The walkout is just one of the clouds forming over Sarkozy: The economy is lagging despite his pledges to invigorate it, signs of discord over his policies are cracking his party — and his rocky marriage is front-page news.
The president himself appeared unfazed, saying Tuesday night he would push through the reforms regardless of public protest because "That's what I was elected for."
A union leader, meanwhile, threatened even more strikes if the government did not negotiate on the retirement rights.
While France's strikes are legendary, the country has not had any serious ones since Sarkozy took office. This week's action could be the biggest in years.
Labor leaders hoped the walkout would recall 1995 strikes that paralyzed the country and sapped then-President Jacques Chirac's appetite for reform.
Sarkozy himself will be away Thursday at an EU summit in Portugal. But tens of millions of his compatriots will be struggling to get to work and school.
The Paris transport authority RATP said traffic would be "virtually nil" on most of its lines, and "nearly paralyzed" on the national rail network.
Eurostar trains to London and connections to neighboring European countries also would be disrupted.
Transit workers initiated the strikes, but employees of state-run electricity, gas and other services also could take part.
Most teachers were not planning to strike, but some schools were expected to close because of transport difficulties.
Air travel also faced potential disturbances, according to civil aviation authorities, who said there was a risk flights would be modified, particularly early in the day if administrative and airport personnel had trouble getting to work.
The strikes could overflow into Friday. Three train federations were calling for a daily vote on whether to extend the strikes.
The pension plans under threat, which cover workers at an array of different companies and institutions, were originally devised to give advantages to those in physically demanding jobs, such as miners and train drivers.
Workers covered by the special pensions are able to retire earlier and on more generous terms than the vast majority of the French working population.
Sarkozy, who pledged changes to France's labor protections during his election campaign earlier this year, deems the benefits too costly, outdated and unfair.
Labor Minister Xavier Bertrand said Wednesday that the reforms were "indispensable."
The head of the CGT union, Bernard Thibault, urged the government to start "real negotiation" over the retirement reform or face more strikes, according to an interview with Le Monde published Wednesday.
Meanwhile, Sarkozy is facing dissent within his own UMP party. UMP lawmakers are split over government plans for a DNA test for aspiring immigrants, and have bristled at hints he will open his government to more opposition Socialists.
The economic outlook offers little inspiration. Public deficits are widening even as forecasts for French growth shrink to 1.8 percent, less than the 2 percent to 2.5 percent the government had targeted.
And on the home front, a respected newsweekly reported Wednesday that Sarkozy and his wife, Cecilia, have informed a judge they are separating. The president's office would not comment on the report, which comes after weeks of rumors of a split.
<http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/10/16/europe/paris.php> Is Nicolas Sarkozy's honeymoon over? By Elaine Sciolino Tuesday, October 16, 2007
PARIS: The town council of Sannat, a village of 380 people in the dead center of France, became so fed up with President Nicolas Sarkozy last month that it decided not to hang his official portrait in the town hall.
Calling its act a "bit rebellious," Henri Sauthon, the village's 81-year-old mayor, explained that the council had taken the unusual step because it disapproved of what he called Sarkozy's imperial and egotistical style.
"Our decision is irrevocable," Sauthon said in a brief telephone interview. "I have nothing more to say."
Granted, Sauthon calls himself a man of the left and his village voted Socialist in the election last May that swept the conservative Sarkozy to power.
But five months into Sarkozy's presidency, a sense of unease and discontent is surfacing - not just among Sarkozy's opponents but even within the corridors of the French government and Sarkozy's governing Union for a Popular Movement party.
France's 52-year-old leader has flooded the political landscape with political and economic initiatives aimed at changing the way things have been done in France but raising questions about whether there is a coherent strategy behind them.
He has incurred the wrath of loyalists in his conservative camp by giving high-level jobs to political personalities on the left. He has ruffled the feathers of some of his own ministers by contradicting them in public and sometimes even doing their jobs for them.
On Thursday, he will face the first test of whether his know-it-all, do-it-all approach is working: a huge one-day strike opposing his pension-reform initiative that envisions an end to special pension privileges for workers in state-controlled companies that cost the government about $7 billion a year.
Unions of the state-owned railroad company, the Paris Métro service and the power utilities have announced that their workers will stay home on what is being called "Black Thursday." Postal and employment-office employees are expected to join in, as will some of the smaller Air France unions.
The Palais Garnier canceled its Thursday performance of the Verdi opera "La Traviata" and the Comédie Française canceled Molière's "The Imaginary Invalid."
A previous attempt to eliminate the pension privileges in 1995 was abandoned after three weeks of crippling strikes and mass protests. This time Bernard Thibault, the leader of France's oldest and most powerful union, the CGT, is poised to negotiate, saying he does not want a lengthy walkout.
Sarkozy, meanwhile, who campaigned on a pledge to get the country to "work more to earn more," is gambling that the public will support him. "I was elected precisely to confront difficult issues," he said last week.
"He knows that there is a great desire for change among the people," Claude Guéant, Sarkozy's chief of staff and closest adviser, said in an interview. "He said this throughout the campaign and that seduced public opinion. Today he is doing what he said he was going to do and I believe that will continue to seduce."
Seduction, however, may not be enough to transform France.
France is the biggest public spender relative to its gross domestic product in the 27-country European Union. Its public debt has increased faster than that of any other EU member. The 2008 budget includes a deficit of nearly $59 billion and has been projected on a growth rate that even the government's own statistical arm calls much too optimistic.
The economy is in such bad shape, Prime Minister François Fillon said last month, that the state is "bankrupt" - a term that aides at the Élysée Palace quickly branded as an unfortunate word choice.
"The real problem of Nicolas Sarkozy is not that he wants to change things - the country elected him to change things - but that the economy is in such bad shape," said Manuel Valls, the Socialist mayor of Evry and one of the party's rising young stars. "He is not an economic liberal like Thatcher or Reagan, but remains a Gaullist at heart. The strategy he has chosen doesn't support economic growth."
But Sarkozy is not one to accept criticism or negative thinking. Showered with nicknames like "hyper-president" and "Tsarkozy," he has annoyed some of his ministers both by relying heavily on a kitchen cabinet of a handful of close advisers and publicly putting his ministers in their place whenever he deems it necessary.
In August, he referred to himself as "the boss" and to Fillon, who as prime minister is the official head of government, as a mere "collaborator" - a word that conveys the meaning of "aide," rather than partner.
Visibly upset, Fillon reacted harshly, saying, "This is not a term that I would have used."
In a television interview shortly afterward, Sarkozy praised Fillon's work as "perfectly remarkable," adding that the two of them are "interchangeable."
After campaigning on a platform aimed at wooing voters away from the extreme right National Front, Sarkozy has tacked to the left to avoid the impression that reform will be too painful. The government has been forced to pay nearly $13 billion in tax cuts passed by Parliament this summer, for example.
When Christine Lagarde, the finance minister, announced that the 2008 budget reflected a policy "of rigor," she was quickly criticized by Guéant, Sarkozy's chief of staff. When Fillon announced that a civil service reform initiative was "ready to go," Sarkozy suggested he had spoken too soon.
Sarkozy's 2008 budget has been criticized for not reducing either public spending or public borrowing, and for failing to curb the country's deficit.
"Without great coherence or real ambition, this plan seems above all to symbolize the hesitations of the government," Le Monde wrote in an editorial after the budget was announced.
Other reforms have been more modest than predicted. Sarkozy had harshly criticized France's mandatory 35-hour workweek, but instead of abolishing it - a politically unacceptable solution - he merely pushed through a measure that made it less expensive for employers to pay their workers overtime by removing tax and social charges from overtime hours.
After pledging during his campaign to eliminate one in two of the civil servant jobs that came open with retirement, he has scaled back the initiative to one in three.
Meanwhile, Sarkozy's plan to continue a policy of political "opening" that brings prominent figures on the left into government or onto high-profile commissions has infuriated politicians in his own party.
"If you put too much salt or pepper on a dish, it becomes inedible," said Nadine Morano, a deputy of Sarkozy's UMP party in Parliament. Another party deputy, Georges Tron, dismissed what he called "this whole openness thing" as a "stunt."
In the Senate, the president of the UMP party, Josselin de Rohan, quoted Charles de Gaulle as saying, "Above all, the adversary is the adversary," and then adding his own formulation, "The adversary is known; it's called the Socialist Party."
Sarkozy has dismissed his critics, saying, "I don't want clones."
Paradoxically, France's opposition on the left has become so weak that Dominique de Villepin, the former prime minister who is from Sarkozy's own UMP party, has begun to emerge as perhaps the most outspoken leader of France's opposition.
In particular, he has faulted Sarkozy for moving on all fronts simultaneously, saying that it risks an outcome of confusion and half measures.
"The president has the confidence of the people, but he seems to believe you can reform the country by putting all the subjects of reform on the table at the same time," Villepin said in an interview. "There has to be logic and very vigorous debate. But nobody dares to tell the president the truth or that he is wrong."
-- Yoshie