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French Socialist candidate Segolene Royal in Israel (AP)
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| December 5, 2006 |
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French presidential candidate Segolene Royal traveled to the Middle East hoping to show that she can shine on the international stage as brightly as she has done at home.
Seeing a chance to add heavyweight diplomatic credentials to her bid for the presidency, she waded into the intricacies of the Middle East crisis with gusto. But she appeared to trip up in Lebanon, then took a tough, controversial position on Iran's nuclear program that flies in the face of an international treaty.
In Israel on Monday, the Socialist candidate said she would press the international community to ban Iran's access to nuclear power entirely if she is elected next spring. Her position goes far beyond the French stance of pressing for a halt to uranium enrichment there, and it even contradicts the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which says a peaceful nuclear program is acceptable.
Royal said Iran was not to be trusted, and that a civilian nuclear program there would permit a military one.
"All those who think the contrary show their naivete, and I'm not naive," she told reporters. Similar comments on Iran in the past have led critics to pounce on her, saying she needed to brush up on her knowledge of international treaties.
While foreign policy does not top French voters' concerns, the perception that Royal cannot be trusted to handle the world's most pressing and delicate issues is one that she or any serious French presidential candidate can ill afford.
In France, foreign policy is the near-exclusive domain of the president, and negotiating the treacherous waters of international affairs will be a major part of Royal's job if she is elected next spring. Royal, a former family and environment minister, is considered politically inexperienced by her critics.
In Lebanon, Royal failed to immediately react when a Hezbollah lawmaker with whom she met Friday compared Israel's former occupation of Lebanon to that of the Nazis in France during World War II.
The next day, as criticism of her mounted, Royal insisted that she simply had not heard the remark, made in Arabic and translated for French reporters covering her trip. Royal, who had a different translator, said she would have left the meeting in protest if she had heard. The comments, she said, were "unacceptable, abominable and hateful."
But by then the damage was seemingly done. Back in France, her political rivals have seized on the incident as evidence that the Socialist candidate who has no experience of top government posts is a diplomatic lightweight, even a liability.
The camp of Nicolas Sarkozy, Royal's leading challenger on the French right, led the criticism. Sarkozy's party said Royal's five-day trip was "poorly prepared," "useless for peace" and "dangerous."
Defense Minister Michele Alliot-Marie suggested that Royal may have endangered French lives in Lebanon, where France has 1,500 troops in the U.N. peacekeeping force monitoring the cease-fire between Israel and Hezbollah.
Sarkozy himself, who is taking care not to appear ungentlemanly against a woman candidate, was more measured, noting that the Middle East is "extremely complicated."
But one of his close advisers, Francois Fillon, showed no such restraint. He told Le Journal du Dimanche newspaper that Royal had "fallen into Hezbollah's trap."
"Accepting to speak with a member of Hezbollah, which advocates the destruction of Israel, was already a mistake," Fillon said. "Letting him insult France's allies -- whether they are the United States or Israel -- without reacting, is another serious mistake."
Royal is not the first Western politician to have hit trouble on a Middle Eastern foray. In 1999, a trip by Hillary Clinton -- elected in 2000 to the U.S. Senate, representing New York -- was also portrayed by her critics as a political disaster, after she also failed to immediately react to inflammatory comments by Suha Arafat, Yassir Arafat's wife. Mrs. Arafat claimed the Israelis have used poison gas against Palestinians.
Royal will nonetheless return from the Middle East with photos of herself shaking hands with Israeli, Lebanese and Palestinian leaders -- statesmanlike images that could stay in voters' minds long after the criticism surrounding her trip has died down.
On Sunday, she was in Gaza for talks with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, and her trip came to an end with talks with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert about Syria, the two Israeli soldiers captured by Hezbollah on July 12 and Iran.
Royal also paid respects at Israel's official Holocaust museum, Yad Vashem, in Jerusalem, devoted to the memory of 6 million Jews killed in Nazi extermination camps during World War II. In a note she wrote in the museum's visitor's book, she called Holocaust survivors "the true heroes of our time."
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