The first major foreign policy decision of new French Prime Minister Jacques Chirac, denying permission for U.S. bombers to overfly France on their way to Libya, came as a surprise to many who expected him to have a more pro-American attitude.
After all, only the month before, he had firmly emphasized the need to increase cooperation among Western countries in order to fight terrorism.
The decision was taken jointly with Socialist president Francois Mitterrand, but Chirac had to face alone the criticism of conservative politicians who had expected that his coming to power would bring a change in foreign affairs.
"French people voted for a change, but was it worth changing the government if it conducts the same foreign policy?" Philippe Malaud, a conservative deputy, told THE WORLD & I, expressing a mood shared by many.
In the days following the U.S. raid, the first serious division emerged within the conservative coalition that had won a majority in parliament in the March elections.
Of the two parties forming the coalition, deputies from the neo-Gaullist Rally for the Republic, Chirac's party, generally backed the government's decision not to allow overflights. But most members of the Union for French Democracy (UDF), led by former president Valery Giscard d'Estaing and acting UDF president Jean Lecanuet, strongly criticized the lack of solidarity of the government with France's key ally.
Giscard d'Estaing said, in an indirect criticism of the government, that "the Western world should have expressed its solidarity in such circumstances." The former president recalled that "in a similar situation" in 1978, when he decided to send paratroopers to free Kolwezi, a mining town in Zaire that had been seized by Cuban-backed rebels, he received the support of the United States. (French forces were sent to Zaire in American military planes.)
Lecanuet spoke of the "fluctuating French foreign policy" and said he was not satisfied by the explanations given by the government to defend its decision.
Most opposed
Surprisingly, in the parliamentary debate following the raid most deputies opposed the government's decision. With the exception of the Socialists and Communists, who remained silent as a way of expressing their approval of the government, in the conservative ranks only an aging Gaullist figure, Michel Debre, supported the prime minister.
Foreign Minister Jean-Bernard Raimond answered questions from deputies, saying amid boos that the government did not grant the authorization to overfly its territory because it feared the raid would unleash "a spiral of violence." He said the government asked for further consultations with the United States over the appropriate measures to face terrorism.
If the French government contended that the raid was not "an appropriate measure" to counter terrorism, it remained very vague on what should be
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