PRINT DOC REQUESTED: JANUARY 27, 2000 10580X 1 DOCUMENT PRINTED 3 PRINTED PAGES SEND TO: WEBSTER LIBRARY, # 1 CONCORDIA UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES 7141 SHERBROOKE STREET WEST MONTREAL, QUEBEC CANADA H4B 1R6 **********************************02762********************************** PAGE 1 DATE: JANUARY 27, 2000 CLIENT: PAUL LIBRARY: NEWS FILE: ALLNWS YOUR SEARCH REQUEST IS: FRANCE BOSNIA YOUR FOCUS SEARCH REQUEST IS: FRANCE BOSNIA HERZGOVINA NUMBER OF STORIES FOUND WITH YOUR FOCUS REQUEST: 1 PAGE 2 1ST STORY of Focus printed in FULL format. Copyright 1995 U.S. News & World Report U.S. News & World Report July 31, 1995 SECTION: WORLD REPORT; Vol. 119 , No. 5; Pg. 33 LENGTH: 517 words HEADLINE: A Gaullist bulldozer gets down to work in Paris BYLINE: By Fred Coleman DATELINE: Paris HIGHLIGHT: France's Jacques Chirac; BODY: Over dinner last month, Greek Prime Minister Andreas Papandreou defended the Bosnian Serbs as Christians "fighting for their religion" against Muslim hordes. "Don't talk to me about wars of religion," Jacques Chirac snapped back. "The Bosnian Serbs are people with neither faith nor law. They are terrorists." French commentators called Francois Mitterrand, Chirac's socialist predecessor as president of France, "the Florentine" because of his complex, Machiavellian approach to politics and foreign affairs. They call Chirac "the Bulldozer." Just two months in office, the new French president is telling it like it is -- and churning up dust at home and abroad. Tough stand. Alone among Western leaders, Chirac has called for military action on the ground to re-establish the United Nations safe haven in Srebrenica, to reinforce Gorazde before it is overrun by the Serbs and to put his own troops in the front line of any such effort. He even compared the Western refusal to stop the Serbs with Europe's appeasement of Hitler. Aides credit his tough words for getting results, among them last week's allied consultations about increased joint military operations. Yet behind such rhetoric is a cold calculation. The French leader, who took office in May, is under no obligation to justify past Western policy mistakes he had no hand in designing. So, unlike Bill Clinton and John Major, Chirac pays no political price for backing a tough new line. If his initiative works, and allied military action stops the Serbs, Chirac can take credit. If it fails, because the allies won't go along, then Chirac can blame them for the resultant U.N. withdrawal. Either way, goes the calculus of Chirac's backers, the French president will look like a winner. Chirac's critics are not so sure. Anne-Marie le Gloannec of the National Foundation for Political Science in Paris says Chirac's stand on Bosnia amounts to this: "Right, let's go. But hold me back because I really don't want to go there." Other critics contend Chirac's foreign policy focus is partly designed to divert attention from a festering domestic scandal over obtaining low-cost, city-subsidized housing for himself and his political cronies while he was PAGE 3 U.S. News & World Report, July 31, 1995 FOCUS mayor of Paris. Whatever his motivation, Chirac's tough line on Bosnia is but one example of a commitment to real change. His decision to resume nuclear tests in the South Pacific, despite a global outcry of protest, is another. And earlier this month, Chirac acknowledged France's role in deporting thousands of Jews to Nazi death camps during World War II, an issue Mitterrand and other French leaders had danced around for decades. Asked recently whether American hesitation to commit troops to Bosnia undermined U.S. claims to leadership, Chirac replied -- in true Gaullist fashion -- "There is no leader of the Atlantic alliance." After two years of French foreign policy inactivity while a cancer-weakened Mitterrand finished his term, such pronouncements are a blunt reminder that Jacques Chirac intends to keep his country at the center of the global stage. GRAPHIC: Picture, Real change. Chirac (Pool Passation de Pouvoir -- Gamma/Liaison) LANGUAGE: ENGLISH LOAD-DATE: July 28, 1995 PRINT DOC REQUESTED: JANUARY 27, 2000 10580X 1 DOCUMENT PRINTED 3 PRINTED PAGES SEND TO: WEBSTER LIBRARY, # 1 CONCORDIA UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES 7141 SHERBROOKE STREET WEST MONTREAL, QUEBEC CANADA H4B 1R6 **********************************02800********************************** PAGE 1 DATE: JANUARY 27, 2000 CLIENT: PAUL LIBRARY: NEWS FILE: ALLNWS YOUR SEARCH REQUEST IS: FRANCE BOSNIA YOUR FOCUS SEARCH REQUEST IS: FRANCE BOSNIA HERZGOVINA NUMBER OF STORIES FOUND WITH YOUR FOCUS REQUEST: 1 PAGE 2 1ST STORY of Focus printed in FULL format. Copyright 1995 U.S. News & World Report U.S. News & World Report July 31, 1995 SECTION: WORLD REPORT; Vol. 119 , No. 5; Pg. 33 LENGTH: 517 words HEADLINE: A Gaullist bulldozer gets down to work in Paris BYLINE: By Fred Coleman DATELINE: Paris HIGHLIGHT: France's Jacques Chirac; BODY: Over dinner last month, Greek Prime Minister Andreas Papandreou defended the Bosnian Serbs as Christians "fighting for their religion" against Muslim hordes. "Don't talk to me about wars of religion," Jacques Chirac snapped back. "The Bosnian Serbs are people with neither faith nor law. They are terrorists." French commentators called Francois Mitterrand, Chirac's socialist predecessor as president of France, "the Florentine" because of his complex, Machiavellian approach to politics and foreign affairs. They call Chirac "the Bulldozer." Just two months in office, the new French president is telling it like it is -- and churning up dust at home and abroad. Tough stand. Alone among Western leaders, Chirac has called for military action on the ground to re-establish the United Nations safe haven in Srebrenica, to reinforce Gorazde before it is overrun by the Serbs and to put his own troops in the front line of any such effort. He even compared the Western refusal to stop the Serbs with Europe's appeasement of Hitler. Aides credit his tough words for getting results, among them last week's allied consultations about increased joint military operations. Yet behind such rhetoric is a cold calculation. The French leader, who took office in May, is under no obligation to justify past Western policy mistakes he had no hand in designing. So, unlike Bill Clinton and John Major, Chirac pays no political price for backing a tough new line. If his initiative works, and allied military action stops the Serbs, Chirac can take credit. If it fails, because the allies won't go along, then Chirac can blame them for the resultant U.N. withdrawal. Either way, goes the calculus of Chirac's backers, the French president will look like a winner. Chirac's critics are not so sure. Anne-Marie le Gloannec of the National Foundation for Political Science in Paris says Chirac's stand on Bosnia amounts to this: "Right, let's go. But hold me back because I really don't want to go there." Other critics contend Chirac's foreign policy focus is partly designed to divert attention from a festering domestic scandal over obtaining low-cost, city-subsidized housing for himself and his political cronies while he was PAGE 3 U.S. News & World Report, July 31, 1995 FOCUS mayor of Paris. Whatever his motivation, Chirac's tough line on Bosnia is but one example of a commitment to real change. His decision to resume nuclear tests in the South Pacific, despite a global outcry of protest, is another. And earlier this month, Chirac acknowledged France's role in deporting thousands of Jews to Nazi death camps during World War II, an issue Mitterrand and other French leaders had danced around for decades. Asked recently whether American hesitation to commit troops to Bosnia undermined U.S. claims to leadership, Chirac replied -- in true Gaullist fashion -- "There is no leader of the Atlantic alliance." After two years of French foreign policy inactivity while a cancer-weakened Mitterrand finished his term, such pronouncements are a blunt reminder that Jacques Chirac intends to keep his country at the center of the global stage. GRAPHIC: Picture, Real change. Chirac (Pool Passation de Pouvoir -- Gamma/Liaison) LANGUAGE: ENGLISH LOAD-DATE: July 28, 1995