 From the Rantburg Diplomacy Desk:
Presidents Jacques Chirac and Aleksander Kwasniewski sat down Monday at an inaugural Franco-Polish summit with the aim of settling past differences over the US invasion of Iraq and building unity between "Old" and "New" Europe. The two heads of state, accompanied by several government ministers, were given a Polish welcome as they arrived in the northern French town of Arras, in the centre of a region home to a community of half a million French Poles...Despite the public display of togetherness, France and Poland have several issues of disagreement between them. Falling on either side of the divide of "Old" and "New" Europe coined by US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, the two were at loggerheads over the US invasion of Iraq. Poland contributed troops to the invasion and subsequent occupation while France led opposition to it. There is also potential for disagreement over Poland's eagerness to win EU agricultural subsidies that have up to now benefited French farmers, and on France's restrictions on Polish immigrants looking for work. In addition, France, Britain and Germany are pressuring Poland to buy passenger planes from Airbus rather than from the US company Boeing. Chirac was said to have pressed that point further in his discussion with Kwasniewski, whose country has long sought stronger commercial ties with the United States - home to a sizeable Polish diaspora. French Interior Minister Dominique de Villepin - who personified France's anti-war stand on Iraq when he was foreign minister - downplayed the differences and insisted instead that the welcome shown in Arras showed "the force of the links and the solidarity between France and Poland." |