France's top diplomat caught in a harsh light
By Katrin Bennhold International Herald Tribune
SATURDAY, APRIL 29, 2006
PARIS He has confused Taiwan with Thailand and Croatia with Kosovo and speaks no foreign language - not even English. Indeed, so gaffe-prone is the French foreign minister, Philippe Douste-Blazy, that President Jacques Chirac routinely orders a civil servant to follow him around with a recording device to keep track of all potential mishaps, according to a scathing account in the newspaper Le Monde.
The report, published as Douste- Blazy was meeting with his NATO counterparts in Sofia, lists anecdote after embarrassing anecdote about faux pas that Le Monde says have sapped his credibility both abroad and among his own diplomats.
In one instance, it said, he was so vague after an important ministerial meeting at the United Nations that French diplomats had to ask Britain's foreign secretary for a debriefing.
In another, at the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem last September, Le Monde said, Douste- Blazy stopped at a map recording the Jewish communities in European countries before and after World War II.
"Were there no Jews killed in Britain?" he asked. "But Mr. Minister, Britain was never occupied by the Nazis," the curator replied. To which Douste-Blazy shot back: "But were no Jews expelled from Britain?" Asked Friday about the Le Monde report, a Foreign Ministry spokesman who was in Sofia with Douste-Blazy declined to comment.
Beyond the timing of the article, its embarrassing portrayal of France's chief diplomat as a figure with many nicknames but little influence is a metaphor for a government beset by a string of political blunders. From the no vote on the referendum on the European constitution last May to a three-week spell of rioting in immigrant neighborhoods last autumn and the recent protest movement against an unpopular youth employment plan, France's leadership has been in crisis mode for a year.
"The article certainly doesn't help France's image abroad," said Pierre Giacometti, director of political research at the Ipsos polling institute in Paris. "But it is also symptomatic of the political fragility of the government."
Jean-Philippe Roy, a professor of political science at Tours University, said: "The government is stripped of all its legitimacy. It is no longer governing; it is just running the day-to-day affairs of the country."
With a year to go before a presidential election, that situation is expected to continue. Both Chirac and Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin - who appointed Douste-Blazy, 53, as foreign minister in June - have seen their popularity ratings plummet to record lows.
Raphaëlle Bacqué, the author of the Le Monde piece, said in a telephone interview that she had set out three weeks ago to write a broader article about the current gloom among France's traditionally proud diplomatic corps, but had found that Douste-Blazy himself was a major element adding to the frustration.
That is how he became the focus of her article. Said Bacqué: "He is very representative of the current crisis in France."
www.iht.com . . .