PARIS LETTER: The year 2003 arrived in France in black and white; black like the toxic, gooey, cow-pat size chunks of petroleum from the sunken tanker Prestige which began washing up on the Atlantic coast on New Year's Eve; white like the unexpected snowstorms which paralysed the country this week, prompting the creation of two missions of inquiry.
There are more important issues in France and the world, but the black-and-white dilemmas have absolute priority in French media.
President Jacques Chirac held a special press conference after his first cabinet meeting of the year, on January 3rd, to express his "revulsion" at the "ecological catastrophe" caused by the oil spill. He denounced "shady businessmen, the hoodlums of the sea, who cynically exploit the lack of transparency of the present [maritime safety\] system."
Mr Chirac and the Raffarin government learned from the experience of the Spanish Prime Minister, José-Maria Aznar, that ignoring the disaster could be politically costly. They had had seven weeks since the Prestige" sank off the coast of Galicia with 77,000 tonnes of fuel to prepare their indignation. The Prime Minister, Jean-Pierre Raffarin, visited the stained beaches of the Gironde region, promised €50 million in aid and committed 700 men to the clean-up.
The shell-fish farmers were unhappy, filing a lawsuit over what they claimed was exaggerated coverage of the oil spill that damaged their reputation.
RETURNING holiday-makers who had waited in vain for snow in the ski resorts drove towards Paris on January 4th in the hope of beating mass traffic jams expected for Sunday. In a few hours, defying meteorologists' predictions, the temperature dropped from 8 degrees to minus 2.
Flights out of Roissy and Orly airports stopped. A lorry slid on ice across the A10 highway, blocking traffic. Fifteen thousand motorists spent Saturday night in their cars, in minus 5 degrees. Thousands more overnighted in airports. Authorities provided no information or assistance.
When they finally resumed their journey on Sunday, the motorists were enraged to be asked to pay the highway toll. By Monday, the freak cold spell spread south, bringing snow to Nîmes, Montpellier and Toulouse.
The government used one of its favourite tactics: sharing the outrage of "the people".
Mr Raffarin said on television on Sunday night that he "understood the dissatisfaction" of those who had been delayed. "I saw a certain number of images this weekend that gave me the impression that road and airport users weren't being respected the way they should be."
The Prime Minister promised to investigate the dysfonctionnements which brought the world's fourth economic power to its knees with a snowstorm.
Meanwhile, the French public are beginning to realise that the war they are expecting - in Iraq - is not the one in which they are getting bogged down - in the Ivory Coast.
Since civil war broke out in the west African country on September 19th, France has quadrupled its military presence, from 650 to 2,500, making Operation Unicorn the biggest French intervention in Africa in two decades.
On Christmas Eve, the chief of staff of the armed forces, Gen Henri Bentégeat, visited troops and said a French military presence might be necessary "for several years".
The Foreign Minister, Dominique de Villepin, was spat at and briefly held hostage by demonstrators loyal to President Laurent Gbagbo in Abidjan on January 3rd.
The day after Mr de Villepin returned to Paris with a commitment by all parties to observe a ceasefire and attend a peace conference here on January 15th, French troops fought their worst battle with Ivoirian rebels, killing 30 of them. Nine Frenchman were wounded.
THE Israeli-Palestinian war though is having the deepest repercussions in French media and on the streets of Paris. The staff of the University of Paris-VI last month passed a motion calling on the EU to stop university level co-operation with Israel, saying that "the Israeli occupation of the territories of the West Bank and Gaza makes the higher education and research activities of our Palestinian colleagues impossible".
Then this week, the Nobel prize-winning French physicist Claude Cohen-Tannoudji, who does research in a laboratory at Paris- VI, published an open letter in Le Monde: "I'm ashamed of these colleagues who dare to excommunicate other colleagues because of their nationality."
Prominent Jewish intellectuals compared the university's motion to treatment of the Jews by Nazis - without mentioning the Israeli occupation. On Monday, pro-Israeli groups traded insults with pro-Palestinian demonstrators and the National Assembly deputy Pierre Lellouche denounced the "irresponsibility" of those who want to import the conflict to France.
One proponent of a moratorium on scientific co-operation with Israel is a French Jewish physicist named Jean-Marc Lévy-Leblond.
In a text written last May, Mr Lévy-Leblond noted that "the co- operation agreements between the EU and Israel were concluded in the euphoria of the (1993) Oslo accords, to support peace; now that the Israeli government has taken another path and is systematically destroying all infrastructure built with European aid for the future Palestinian state, these accords have been diverted from their goal and must be suspended."
