Sarkozy ready to cozy up to new buddy Barack

Barack Obama is still enjoying a honeymoon with his supporters while Nicolas Sarkozy is sailing close to the wind. Photo / AP

PARIS - Charles de Gaulle may be turning angrily in his grave in the village of Colombey-les-Deux-Eglises but his spiritual heir, Nicolas Sarkozy, shows no qualms or regret for his deed.

It was de Gaulle who, 43 years ago, slapped America by pulling France out of Nato's military command, asserting that his country would follow its own strategy of deterrence.

And it was Sarkozy who, in a near-Oedipal act, overturned the time-honoured policy of his doctrinal father and national hero.

In doing so, Sarkozy is reshaping Franco-American ties in a way unimaginable a year ago and boosting his claim to being Europe's big player with Washington, say analysts.

"With anti-Americanism rife in much of the French political elite as well as within public opinion throughout the Bush years, it's important not to underestimate how much the French President has set about reshaping old mindsets in France," says Alastair Cameron of a British think-tank, the Royal United Service Institute.

Sarkozy nailed his pro-Americanism to the mast when he was elected President in 2007, but had to wait until the election of Barack Obama before he could make the strategic leap.

Assuming that Parliament on Wednesday approves Sarkozy's announcement, the stage will be set for the diminutive French President to grab the spotlight alongside Obama at Nato's 60th anniversary bash.

The summit is being staged in the French and German cities of Strasbourg and Kehl, straddling the Rhine, on April 3 and 4.

France is expected to be allotted two commands within Nato, but the diplomatic rewards could be far greater.

The US has already warmly welcomed France's return, saying it looked forward to "working even more closely with [the French] in the decades to come".

Last week Sarkozy declared: "A state alone, a solitary nation, is a nation without influence, and if we count for something, we have to know how to bind ourselves to allies and friendships.

"France wants peace. France wants freedom and France also knows who our friends are and who our enemies are. I'm not afraid to say it, our friends and allies are first and foremost the Western family." De Gaulle's move in 1966 enabled France to remain a political member of Nato and thus benefit from its pledge of mutual defence in the event of attack.

But French officers had to quit the alliance's permanent military command and France lost its seats on two key committees for nuclear and strategic planning.

De Gaulle was suspicious of American hegemony in Nato and feared Europe - and thus France - would become a giant nuclear battlefield in a Cold War showdown. But in the eyes of many Americans, he stamped France as a selfish and unreliable ally.

Hostility towards France reached its peak when President Jacques Chirac refused to join President George W. Bush's Iraq War in 2003.

Neo-cons in Washington had open season to attack France, which was styled alongside Germany as "Old Europe" - shorthand for fair-weather friends. The House of Representatives ordered that french fries in its cafeteria be renamed "freedom fries". French diplomats say there are sound reasons for returning to full-fledged alliance membership.

Over the past 15 years, France has taken part in all of Nato's military operations and plays a linchpin role in Kosovo, Afghanistan and the Nato Response Force.

But the bizarre half-in, half-out status meant France could not take part in strategic decisions that involved its own forces.

Within France's political elite, Sarkozy is being criticised on the left as cravenly pro-American and within his own Union for a Popular Majority (UMP) party as breaking with the spirit of Gaullism.

"Nothing today justifies returning to Nato military command," said Opposition Socialist leader Martine Aubrey.

"There's no hurry, no basic need, except for this Atlanticism, which is becoming an ideology."

One of his fiercest critics is former Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin, an architect of Chirac's stance on the Iraq War, which was based on the idea that France should be part of a "multipolar" world rather than be aligned, as Sarkozy has declared, with the "Western" sphere.

"France is not a country like the others," de Villepin told the daily Parisien. "It has a history, a specificity which confers duties and responsibilities on it: to be a bridge between East and West and North and South."

For the time being, the public seems indifferent to concerns about France's position in the world. A survey last week of 957 adults found 58 per cent supported rejoining Nato and 37 per cent opposed.

People in France are preoccupied with economic news and Obama is still enjoying a honeymoon, which provides Sarkozy with a good opportunity to bring the curtain down on de Gaulle's era. But moods can be fickle.

Sarkozy "for now" has turned the tide of anti-Americanism in French policy, but the shift "has brought him little domestic advantage and even today carries some political risk," says Cameron.