FRANCE: President Jacques Chirac has attempted to ease tension in France's strained relations with the US by giving a rare interview to Time magazine, in which he admitted that if Iraq is disarmed "there can be no doubt that it will be due in large part to the presence of American forces on the spot", writes Lara Marlowe.
Otherwise, Mr Chirac said, "Saddam might not have agreed to play the game". Disarmament would be a victory for the US, "since it would be essentially thanks to the pressure they exercised that Iraq was disarmed".
Responding to the deluge of anti-French insults coming from the US and Britain, Mr Chirac said, "When I hear people say that I'm anti-American, I'm sad - not angry, but really sad ... I know the US perhaps better than most French people, and I really like the United States. I feel good there."
Mr Chirac argued that it would still be politically feasible for President Bush to stop short of invading Iraq. "If Iraq is stripped of its weapons of mass destruction, and that's been verified by the inspectors, then Mr Bush can say two things," the French leader said. "First, 'Thanks to my intervention, Iraq has been disarmed', and second, 'I achieved that without spilling any blood.' In the life of a statesman, that counts - no blood spilled."
For the first time, Mr Chirac spoke publicly of his deep concern about the repercussions that a US-led war on Iraq would have throughout the Middle East. "Among the negative fallout of this war would inevitably be a strong reaction from Arab and Islamic public opinion ... A war of this kind cannot help but give a big lift to terrorism. It would create a large number of little bin Ladens," he said.
Nor would a war facilitate dialogue between Christians and Muslims. "I'm against the clash of civilisations; that plays into the hands of extremists."
The French President insisted that France is "a true friend of the United States" and agrees totally on the need to eliminate Iraqi weapons of mass destruction - which he does not believe include nuclear arms.
But the remark most repeated by French media was Mr Chirac's unprecedented suggestion that he too advocates regime change in Iraq. "If Saddam Hussein would only vanish, it would without a doubt be the biggest favour he could do for his people and the world," Mr Chirac said.
"But we think this goal can be reached without a war."