Almost by the day there comes another example of Franco-British tension on foreign policy issues. The latest row is over the invitation issued to Mr Robert Mugabe to attend the Franco-African summit in Paris this week. It has been roundly attacked in several British newspapers as typifying French hypocrisy and self-promotion.
What they fail to report is that President Chirac and Mr Blair reached an agreement allowing Mr Mugabe to be invited, in return for the renewal of European Union sanctions imposed one year ago after Zimbabwe expelled the head of the EU election observer team. Mr Chirac was not prepared to jeopardise his much more activist Africa policy by provoking boycotts of this meeting if Mr Mugabe was not invited, despite the common EU policy.
Since his re-election nine months ago and the end of cohabitation with the Socialists, Mr Chirac has overturned the policy of French disengagement from Africa in favour of a much more involved approach. It has been seen most clearly in the Ivory Coast, where France has sent 3,000 troops and brokered a peace deal. It has still to be accepted by President Laurent Gbagbo, who is not attending the Paris meeting and has criticised France's "neo-colonialist" behaviour. But it also involves reactivating economic ties by cultivating French spheres of interest and relations with long-standing - usually long-ruling - clients and friends, some of them as dictatorial as Mr Mugabe.
Mr Chirac clearly sees a distinctive role for France in Africa and one that he would prefer to play mainly on a unilateral basis. The legitimacy and confidence he has drawn from last summer's presidential and parliamentary election victories have been expressed in a more assertive foreign policy. For one who has criticised the US for multilateralism on Iraq, however, he has ground to make up in practising it within the European Union.
Having contributed constructively to the EU summit agreement on Iraq last Monday, Mr Chirac proceeded to attack the accession states for their "infantile" signature of two letters supporting US policy over Iraq. This was "dangerous, reckless, not very well-behaved", he said, adding that they were "badly brought up" and had "missed a great opportunity to shut up." Their action could "reduce their chances of entering Europe."
It was an extraordinarily ill-judged outburst, which reduced the chances of forging a more coherent EU policy on the Iraq crisis. Mr Chirac was expressing an aggravation with the British for encouraging the accession state governments, as well as giving voice to reservations about an enlargement which may see France lose influence. The 12 accession states have their own political and historical reasons for taking this line; but after this episode they will be less keen to subordinate their positions to a common EU policy, which many Europeans rightly see as the only way to balance US global hegemony.