FRANCE: The President stormed out of the stands at the French Cup match after Corsican nationalists booed the national anthem, writes Lara Marlowe
A week after his re-election, President Jacques Chirac's presidential stature seems to grow by the hour. As Mr Chirac travelled to Cherbourg yesterday to pay homage to 11 French submarine engineers killed in a suicide bombing in Pakistan last week, praise continued to flood in - often from the left - for his angry outbursts in defence of France at the weekend.
Mr Chirac walked out of the stands at the French Cup football match to show his displeasure with Corsican nationalists who booed the Marseillaise. Earlier, he reprimanded the Israeli Prime Minister, Mr Ariel Sharon, for what he called "the anti-French campaign in Israel".
Supporters of the Sporting Club de Bastia, which has links with Coriscan nationalists, whistled when the opening bars of the French national anthem were played at the Lorient-Bastia match at the Stade de France on May 11th. In a similar incident last October, former prime minister Mr Lionel Jospin was criticised for failing to react when supporters of the Algerian team also jeered the Marseillaise. The popularity of the extreme right-wing leader, Mr Jean-Marie Le Pen, immediately shot up.
Corsican football supporters had been told to remain seated with their arms crossed when the anthem was sung. About a dozen booed and hissed. Mr Chirac stormed out of the stand and demanded that the president of the French football federation an- nounce on the stadium's giant screen that he was angry because the Marseillaise had been booed. Still at the stadium, Mr Chirac recorded a televised statement in which he called the Corsicans' gesture "inadmissible and unacceptable". The President returned to the stands and the match started 20 minutes late. For the first time in the history of the French Cup, the head of state refused to shake hands with the players.
Mr Chirac said he would "not tolerate and will not accept that the essential values of the Republic be attacked" - words similar to those he used recently against the racist National Front. He was praised yesterday by the left-wing newspapers Libération and Le Monde, and by the prominent socialists Mr Francois Hollande and Mr Laurent Fabius, who said he "would have reacted in the same way". Ms Dominique Voynet, the green leader, said Mr Chirac had "overplayed it, but played it well".
Mr Chirac showed similar indignation when Mr Sharon telephoned to discuss the Middle East, to congratulate him on his election victory and to offer condolences for the deaths of the 11 Frenchmen. The French leader "formally protested against the anti-French campaign in Israel, which is portraying France as an anti-Semitic country", Mr Chirac's spokeswoman, Ms Catherine Colonna, said, warning that the campaign "could not continue without consequences". Mr Chirac told Mr Sharon such accusations were unacceptable "at a time when the French have massively shown their rejection of racism, xenophobia and anti-Semitism". In January, the Israeli deputy minister of foreign affairs, Mr Michael Melchior, said France was "the worst Western country in terms of anti-Semitism". The Israeli government has offered special financial incentives to French Jews willing to emigrate to Israel.