PARIS, 9 February — France’s Socialist Prime Minister Lionel Jospin added his voice to the growing criticism from Europe of US foreign policy yesterday, calling on Washington to broaden its contacts with the rest of the world and not to become fixated on the war on terrorism.
"One cannot reduce the problems of the world to the single dimension of the fight against terrorism — however vital that might be — nor can one rely for solving them on the dominance of military methods," Jospin said. "Our conception of the world aims at building a more balanced international community, a safer and fairer world. This conception is based on a multilateral approach," he said.
The prime minister was speaking at a conference of European parliamentarians on international money laundering in Paris. His remarks echoed those of Foreign Minister Hubert Vedrine who on Wednesday accused the US of pursuing a "simplistic" foreign policy since the Sept. 11 attacks.
France favored "all forms of cooperation which allow members of the international community to tackle the essential problems together... No country can claim to be able to solve them alone," Jospin said. Citing international negotiations on the environment, trade and disarmament, he urged Washington "not to give way to the strong temptation of unilateralism, but to re-engage with us."
He said joint action with the US against terrorism would "continue with determination ... but that does not mean we shouldn’t reflect clearly on the lessons to be drawn from the events of Sept. 11."
Several European leaders have recently raised doubts about what they fear is a go-it-alone policy being pursued by President George W. Bush, and in particular about his attempts to broaden the war on terrorism to Iran, Iraq and North Korea — which he branded last week an "axis of evil."
Britain’s Foreign Secretary Jack Straw described Bush’s annual State of the Union address, in which he used the controversial phrase, as domestic electioneering and Ludger Volmer, a state secretary at the German Foreign Ministry, warned the US off an attack on Iraq. In his comments on French radio Wednesday, Vedrine said, "Today we are threatened by a simplistic quality (in US policy) that reduces all the problems of the world to the struggle against terrorism. It is not properly thought through."
The State Department tried to dispel the notion that the US is disregarding its allies, with spokesman Philip Reeker telling journalists Thursday that Secretary of State Colin Powell "is in frequent contact with European leaders and foreign ministers."
However, many European diplomats fear that the State Department is increasingly being sidelined in the formulation of US policy by the White House and the Defense Department. On Wednesday, Bush took an implicit swipe at his international critics, telling a cheering crowd in New York that "some around the world may grow weary. Some of them may grow exhausted by our drive for freedom. But not me, not our government and not our nation."
