Downing Street Says » President Chirac’s Comments

» Tuesday, November 16, 2004

President Chirac’s Comments

Asked for a reaction to President Chirac’s comments stating that the world needed a European balance to the US the PMOS answered "Quel Surprise!" This was a view which the President had expounded on many occasions. There was no surprise about it nor was there any hiding that there was a disagreement about it either. We did not believe in a world vision where you had competing spheres of influence. The President did. That was an open disagreement between us and we should be honest and transparent enough to admit that. We believed however that we could still work together because our whole approach, as the Prime Minister outlined in his Guildhall speech last night, was that we should focus on outcomes. We should focus on what we wanted to achieve. If you looked at a whole range of issues such as Iran where we had just worked successfully with the French and Germans, Africa, Afghanistan, and even the Middle East we shared a common view on what it was we were trying to achieve. So there was no reason why we could not continue to work together on issues like that, as well as on European issues, even if that meant conversations on Thursday would be tougher on other matters. That was life.

Asked about the President’s view that special relationships with America tended to be one-way streets the PMOS said that as the Prime Minister said in Washington he did not view the relationship with the United States as payback or quid pro quo in anyway. It was about outcomes rather than competition. We were working with the US as allies not because we did whatever the US wanted but because we agreed with the analysis on terrorism, we agreed with the analysis on Iraq and as President Bush outlined on Friday we agreed with the analysis on Palestine.

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