Coalition of the Unwilling as Clark meets Chirac

By FRAN O'SULLIVAN in Paris

The war on Iraq and its impact on the future of global security was due to dominate discussions at Prime Minister Helen Clark's meeting with French President Jacques Chirac in Paris overnight.

Jacques Chirac the Gaullist and Helen Clark the Social Democrat had little in common until Iraq.

But the Prime Minister and Mr Chirac, who met at the Elysee Palace, , are more like comrades in arms from the Coalition of the Unwilling.

It was, after all, Mr Chirac who put the killing touch on President George W. Bush's hope for United Nations backing for the invasion of Iraq by vowing to veto a second UN resolution.

He is now facing a backlash from his own people as French wine sales plummet in the US.

Helen Clark also opposed the invasion and had to endure an egregious apology to the Bush Administration when she made some injudicious comments over the progress of the war.

She had wanted to get Mr Chirac's views on how the UN Security Council might deal with other pressing issues such as North Korea during the 90-minute private lunch Mr Chirac hosted for her. The French President greeted the Prime Minister by kissing her hand.

France is one of five permanent members on the Security Council.

Helen Clark shares Mr Chirac's concern that the US might emerge as an unchallenged superpower.

"What everyone's looking at is whether there is going to be a Franco/German/Russia linkup with good links through to the Chinese against what we have which looks like a small Anglo/American group - it shifts the whole dynamic," she told the Herald .

But bilateral issues such as trade and New Zealand's continued access to Europe, threatened by a proposal to limit visas, also played a part.

So, too, did the World Trade Organisation progress on agricultural trade liberalisation which has been stymied by European opposition.

The French are planning a major conference in the Pacific to address development issues and Helen Clark also sought Mr Chirac's view on how the South Pacific Forum could progress matters. The Prime Minister will chair this year's forum which will be held in Auckland in August.

She is presenting New Zealand as an honest broker with "no axe to grind" as she plumps for the supremacy of multilateral institutions, which are the avenue by which small countries such as New Zealand get their position put beside major powers.

Helen Clark's European mission has already taken her to Brussels, where she met nine of 20 EU commissioners.

The Prime Minister's visit has been redolent with symbolism. She has subtly underscored the point that New Zealand blood has been spilled on Europe's fields in two world wars by taking part in the Anzac Day ceremony in London and visiting war graves in Belgium and France.

Yesterday she was given the honour of relighting the flame at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at the Arc de Triomphe in Paris.

In her speech to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development today the Prime Minister is again expected to reassert the value of multilateral processes.