PARIS, 10 April 2003 — There was a touching moment in Paris yesterday when French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin and his British counterpart, Jack Straw, insisted that Paris and London were putting their quarrels behind them for the good of rebuilding Iraq. Citing common values and long, close historical ties between France and Britain, de Villepin said: “The more the international community is unified, the better the postwar process can succeed.... The role we can play is decisive. It is in this spirit we will act in the coming weeks.”

The two men labored hard to demonstrate that their long, bitter quarrel about the use of force against Iraq was now behind them. They even appeared to agree on what had loomed as the next bilateral bone of contention, the role of the United Nations in postwar Iraq. Asked what the difference was between a “vital role” for the UN, as called for by US President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair, and a “central role”, as demanded by France, Straw replied: “They are the same thing.”

And de Villepin agreed. So chummy did the two men appear that it would have surprised no one if they had left the press conference holding hands.

But this is the world of diplomacy, where appearances are very often meant to deceive. As a sign of just how potentially controversial that meeting will be, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s office issued a quick denial late Tuesday that he would also attend, as the Kremlin had announced.

And there was evidence that the postwar diplomatic wrangling will be every bit as bitter as the discord that preceded hostilities.

On Tuesday, Chirac and Bush issued almost diametrically opposite statements about the role of the UN in Iraq after the last shot has been fired in anger there.

The French president declared in Paris that the UN “and it alone” should be responsible for administering Iraq’s postwar reconstruction and rule.

“It alone has the necessary legitimacy to take on the administrative, economic and political reconstruction of Iraq..., which will ensure the future stability not only of Iraq but also of this long-troubled region,” Chirac said in Paris after a meeting with UN High Commissioner for Refugees Ruud Lubbers. This point of view, he added, was “shared by most of the world”, and particularly by Europeans.

However, just hours earlier, in Hillsborough, Northern Ireland, Bush had made it clear that the UN would be little more than a supporting actor in the postwar Iraqi drama. Asked to define what he meant by the UN’s “vital role”, the American president replied, “That means food, that means medicine, that means aid, that means a place where people can give their contributions, that means suggesting people for the (interim Iraqi administration), that means being a party to the progress being made in Iraq.” And in comments made to journalists during breaks between meetings, Bush made it clear that the United States and Britain would continue to play the leading roles in deciding on the members and powers of the interim Iraqi government, the New York Times reported.

More ominously, in a joint statement, Bush and Blair said that the interim authority would be “established first and foremost by the Iraqi people, with the help of the members of the (US-led) coalition, and working with the secretary-general of the United Nations”.

There was no mention of the Security Council, the body in which France, Germany and Russia had long frustrated Bush and Blair’s war plans.