PARIS, 17 February 2003 — Richard Perle, a special adviser to US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and one of the principal proponents of war in the Bush administration, says that “it is not in France’s best interest to want to turn Europe into an adversary of the United States.”
Interviewed in the weekend issue of national daily newspaper Le Figaro, Perle, one of Washington’s strongest backers of an allied invasion of Iraq, warned the French about “going too far in their desire to want to turn Europe into a counterweight to the United States.”
“True,” he admits, “between allies we always can’t be in agreement about everything. But then to go so far as want to devise a strategy of positioning (Europe) as a counterforce (to the United States) is destructive and useless.”
“Especially,” he continues, “because the European Union doesn’t need to have to define itself against anybody or anything to bring about its cohesion.”
As far as he is concerned, moreover, the problem is not between the US and France — “I have a lot of affection for the French people,” he notes — but with President Jacques Chirac.
“What we would like to hear in Washington these days,” he noted, “is that President Chirac is not in the process of turning the European Union into an adversary of the United States. Because, if that were the case, we would have to think of going our separate ways.”
Still, adds Perle, “I’m not for a boycott of French products, as some US Congressmen have proposed, not only because I like French wine, but also because I’m against settling differences with punitive measures. It’s much better to discuss such things.”
As far as he’s concerned, if France has shown in recent days a different appreciation (from the United States) of Iraq and Saddam Hussein, “it’s largely because of France’s desire to make a special arrangement with Iraq, this in turn because of the commercial relations that France has long had with Saddam Hussein.”
