LONDON -- France is in everybody's bad books. In Washington, France has been dismissed -- along with Germany -- as "Old Europe," paralyzed by traditional views and unable to come to terms with the security imperatives of the global age. In London, anti-French feeling has been building up in official circles, with reports of harsh words between British Prime Minister Tony Blair and French President Jacques Chirac, mostly about differing views of Europe's development and differing attitudes to the United States.
In recent days, the London fury has been compounded by a number of factors. First, there are the continuing differences over Iraq, with the French remaining, at least on the surface, deeply hostile to the use of force against Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. Chirac and his colleagues continue to make no secret of their view that Blair is U.S. President George W. Bush's poodle and that American policy, supported by Britain, is, in the words of one French minister, nothing but "an undisguised drive for global supremacy, based on oil and gas."
Second, there is anger in Britain that the French president has invited Robert Mugabe, the butcher of Zimbabwe, to Paris for a conference on African affairs -- a move that the British regard as in direct defiance of the attempt to isolate Mugabe and his regime and prevent him and his senior colleagues from traveling in the European Union, or anywhere else.