For French Defense Minister, Shock and Awe Is Nothing New
At Home and Abroad, Michele Alliot-Marie Manages to Surprise
Alliot-Marie, shown here in Afghanistan, has parachuted with troops to prove she is up to her job. As a potential presidential candidate, she says a female president would "shake the French up a bit," as did a female defense minister, but "with time they found out it was not so bad."
(French Defense Ministry)
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Wednesday, October 18, 2006
PARIS, Oct. 17 -- French Defense Minister Michele Alliot-Marie -- one of the world's few female defense chiefs -- relishes describing her first encounter with the Saudi Arabian military.
"For the troops, it was extraordinary to see a woman there," Alliot-Marie, 60, said in an interview, recalling the 2003 trip. "Some smiled. And others -- if they could have stoned me, they would have done so."
Back home in France, some of her encounters have been no less strained. After years of stealing kisses in phone booths, Alliot-Marie said, she was forced to publicize her secret romance with French lawmaker Patrick Ollier seven years ago when a French magazine photographer shimmied up a tree outside her apartment building and snapped pictures of the couple through a window.
During France's bitter transatlantic rift with the United States over the Iraq war, the defense minister was one of the first officials President Jacques Chirac dispatched to the United States to try to patch up relations.
On Wednesday, Alliot-Marie returns to Washington, not only as Chirac's defense minister but as a potential candidate to succeed him as president next year.
Her visit comes a month after her chief rival in the ruling party, Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy, made his own four-day campaign-style swing through the United States proclaiming his ardent support for the Franco-American alliance.
Although tensions between Washington and Paris have subsided dramatically in the past three years, the French public remains dubious of its political leaders being seen as too close to members of the Bush administration. Sarkozy returned from his trip to scathing newspaper headlines and columns denouncing his appearances with President Bush.
At a Ramadan dinner at Paris's Grand Mosque last week, Alliot-Marie dined on slices of roasted lamb. Afterward, young Muslim leaders grilled her on her views of the U.S. approach to the problems of the Middle East.
"It's easy to make war, especially with the means the Americans have," the defense minister replied from the head of the table in a room with ornately painted ceilings and velvet wall tapestries. "But it's always harder to make peace."
A few days later, in an interview in her massive office at the Defense Ministry, Alliot-Marie said, "I think we should always distinguish between administrations and peoples. There are very strong ties between the French and the American people," which she said remain intact regardless of the administration in office.
In an effort to highlight the historical ties between the two nations, Alliot-Marie will attend a commemoration of the Battle of Yorktown in Virginia, where white-uniformed French soldiers joined George Washington's ragtag American army to defeat the British during the Revolutionary War in 1781.
Alliot-Marie's agenda for her meetings with American officials, including Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, will be centered on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, Iraq and Afghanistan.
