Analysis: New French President More U.S. Friendly But Also Untested

Sunday, May 6th 2007, 4:56 pm

By: News On 6

PARIS (AP) _ Au revoir, Jacques Chirac, and bonjour to a new U.S.-friendly French president who identifies with the American dream and happily affirms that the French like burgers, Madonna and Miami Vice.

To France's ``American friends,'' Nicolas Sarkozy said in his victory speech: ``I want to tell them that France will always be by their side when they need.'' He added, ``I also want to tell them that friendship means accepting that friends can have different opinions.''

But Sarkozy's gaze in his first months in office will be directed more at home than across the Atlantic.

French voters didn't elect the conservative because he promises a warmer new approach to the often troubled yet also deeply rooted relationship between France and the United States. In fact, Sarkozy's America-friendly inclination was seen more as an electoral liability than an advantage.

The new president's priorities will be to get France's sluggish economy and Europe's stalled process of integration moving forward again.

With the exception of Europe _ a national obsession in France, which sees itself as a natural leader of the continent _ foreign affairs got scant attention in the long presidential campaign that was dominated by worries over jobs, the economy and how to compete against rising powers like China.

That means not much is known about how President Sarkozy will lead France on the world stage _ even though foreign affairs are a major part of his new job, an area where Chirac had considerable expertise and where he often seemed more at ease than with domestic issues.

As Chirac's minister for the interior and, in 2004, for finance, Sarkozy worked with governments in Europe and Africa to combat illegal immigration and terrorism, represented France at the International Monetary Fund, and irritated Berlin by protecting the French engineering giant Alstom SA from the advances of Germany rival Siemens AG.

But it is unknown how Sarkozy would cope in a major international crisis.

``He's never done any serious, hands-on broad spectrum diplomacy,'' notes Francois Heisbourg, a leading French foreign and strategic affairs expert.

The learning curve for Sarkozy promises to be steep, and Iran will be a foremost challenge requiring immediate attention. Within days of Sarkozy's inauguration, which must take place before May 17, the international community could ratchet up sanctions against the regime in Tehran if it continues to refuse to suspend its nuclear program. France under Sarkozy can be expected to go along. He describes Iranian leaders as ``extremely dangerous.''

``It's the most sensitive and dangerous dossier in international relations today,'' he says.

Sarkozy's election could improve chances of unblocking the paralysis that has gripped the European Union since 2005, when French and Dutch voters blocked greater integration. Those votes were giant setbacks for pro-Europeans like Sarkozy who want the 27-nation bloc to become a veritable player on the world stage, with coherent policies to guarantee its energy supplies, to regulate immigration from Africa, and to protect European workers from the most cut-throat excesses of globalization.

He promises to be a tough customer in global trade talks, saying Europe should only open its markets to those that open theirs. He wants an EU-wide tax on goods from countries _ he has singled out China _ that have not agreed to cap their greenhouse gas emissions.

And at the World Trade Organization, ``I want reciprocity and I do not want anyone to tell me that we don't have the right to do what the Americans do,'' he says. ``We created Europe to act, not to submit,'' he also says.

Sarkozy says German Chancellor Angela Merkel, the British and Spanish prime ministers, Tony Blair and Jose Luis Rodrigues Zapatero, and European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso have all given him a thumbs-up to his proposal that the bloc adopt a new treaty to unblock EU decision-making and give it an elected president.

But, ultimately, Sarkozy could make his greatest impact abroad, or at least in its region, by setting France on its feet again. By some measures, France has become the sick man of Europe. Only Poland and Slovakia have worse unemployment rates than France. Its economic growth rate is one of Europe's slowest _ only Italy and Portugal did worse last year than France's 2.1 percent.

Reforming France and solving such problems, notes Heisbourg, ``will have a lot more influence than any amount of foreign policy gesturing.''