A rchive Date
[ 23-01-2003 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ France ]
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[http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/World/2003/01/22/13869-ap.html
France, Germany push for peace on Iraq
Wed, January 22, 2003
PARIS (AP) - Countering blunt talk of war by the White House, France and Germany on Wednesday defiantly stated they are committed to giving peace a chance in the crisis over Iraq.
"War is not inevitable," French President Jacques Chirac told a historic joint session of the French and German parliaments. "The only framework for a legitimate solution is the United Nations," Chirac said to resounding applause from the more than 900 legislators marking 40 years of reconciliation between France and Germany. Earlier, after a joint meeting of the French and German cabinets, German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder said the two countries "are entirely in agreement to harmonize our positions more closely in favour of a peaceful solution of the Iraqi crisis."
Chirac said both countries agreed that any decision to attack Iraq should be made only by the UN Security Council, after weapons inspectors have reported their findings. "For us, war is always the proof of failure and the worst of solutions, so everything must be done to avoid it," Chirac said.
France, one of the five permanent members of the Security Council, hinted this week that it could use its veto power on the issue, while Schroeder has made plain that Germany will refuse to back an Iraq war resolution in the council.
France has the current leadership of the Security Council. Though Germany wields no veto, it is set to assume a key role in Iraq war diplomacy when it takes over the council chairmanship in February, just after UN inspectors are due to submit a progress report on Jan. 27. Chirac said France and Germany are working closely in the council "to give peace the utmost chance."
The French and German leaders' push for a peaceful disarming of Iraq comes as their countries mark the 1963 signing of a friendship treaty that sealed their reconciliation after fighting three wars in just 70 years.
Chirac and Schroeder announced a series of initiatives to bring the once-bitter enemies even closer together and give them a leading role in building the European Union as it expands to take in 10 new members next year.
An enlarged Europe "will need the French-German engine," Chirac said in his speech Wednesday to the German and French legislators who gathered at the Versailles palace outside Paris. "This huge ensemble of 450 million people will face risks and challenges," Chirac said. "It will need to find a centre of gravity."
Schroeder echoed the need for closer co-operation: "Few things get done in Europe if France and Germany don't agree."
In a dramatic show of friendship, the two leaders proposed an idea unthinkable to generations that survived two World Wars: granting French and Germans shared nationality.
Schroeder said he and Chirac agreed that dual nationality would be offered "in the long term" to Germans and French who live in the other country. "It will mean, above all, that Germans and French will be able to vote and play a part in decisions where they actually live," he said in his speech at Versailles.
France and Germany could not have chosen a more symbolic location to turn a chapter on their warring past. Versailles is where the Allies forced a humiliated Germany to sign the armistice that ended the Great War - but sowed the seeds of the Second World War. The chateau is also a site of French humiliation. There, after beating France in an 1870-71 war, Germany proclaimed itself an empire.
Neither side gave details of how the dual nationality proposal would work or when it might be implemented. But French and German legislators welcomed the idea.
"This proposal is overdue," said Werner Hoyer, a German legislator. "We have so many people, tens of thousands of French people who have lived in Germany for 10, 20 or 30 years . . . It makes sense to give them full voting rights."
Etienne Pinte, a French legislator and the mayor of Versailles, said he wanted more details. "I think people should have been residents for a certain amount of time and pay taxes to be able to vote."
Chirac and Schroeder also said they would push for common European policies on immigration and asylum, a Europe-wide prosecution service and European criminal files.
The 1963 Elysee Treaty, signed by then French president Charles de Gaulle and German chancellor Konrad Adenauer, laid the foundation for what arguably has grown into Europe's cornerstone friendship.
Since its signing, Germany and France have come together in myriad ways. They are each other's biggest trading partners. They share a common currency, the euro, along with 10 other of the 15 countries that currently make up the EU.
Recently, Germany and France worked to overcome tensions that had crept into the relationship, notably over the future distribution of power within the EU and the always contentious issue of farm subsidies.
 World Fact Book (CIA)]
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