Chirac Urges Revamped NATO in U.S. Address

President Jacques Chirac of France, addressing a joint session of Congress on Thursday, called for negotiation of a “transatlantic charter” to revamp the North Atlantic Treaty Organization so Europe can deal with some military crises without American troops.

After meeting with Chirac at the White House, President Clinton said the United States welcomes the French proposal, as well as France’s recent decision to bring its forces closer to NATO’s military command structure.

Until then, France, while a member of NATO and thus committed to take part in the common defense of Western Europe, had kept its armed forces separate from the integrated military of its allies.

The new French attitude toward the Atlantic alliance signals a sweeping departure from the anti-American and anti-NATO philosophy of Chirac’s mentor, Charles de Gaulle. Yet Chirac’s proposals were sketchy.

It was not clear, for example, whether he envisions a revamped NATO no longer under the dominance of the United States. It was also not clear from Clinton’s comments whether the United States is ready to accept an alliance in which Americans share key command posts with Europeans.

Chirac, speaking through an interpreter, hailed the United States for its role in forging and enforcing the Bosnia-Herzegovina peace agreement and made it clear that France does not want American troops out of Europe.

“The political commitment of the United States in Europe and its military presence on European soil are still an essential element of the stability and the security of the continent,” he told Congress.

But he added that reform would “enable the European allies to assume full responsibilities, with the support of NATO facilities, wherever the United States does not wish to engage its ground forces.”

Although Chirac did not cite Bosnia as an example, both the George Bush and Clinton administrations had hoped that the European powers could handle the Bosnian crisis on their own without the need of American troops--a hope that proved futile.

The French president, who is on a brief state visit that will take him to Chicago today, began his day by giving a posthumous award of the French Legion of Honor to three American diplomats who died last year in the crash of a personnel carrier outside the Bosnian capital, Sarajevo, while trying to negotiate a peace agreement.

Chirac, who canceled his country’s controversial nuclear testing program in the South Pacific earlier this week, told Congress, “France has finished once and for all its nuclear testing.”

He pledged that he will join the Clinton administration in seeking the signing of a comprehensive nuclear test-ban treaty by the end of the year.

The French president’s anti-nuclear testing stance came too late, however, to prevent some members of the House, led by Rep. Patsy Mink (D-Hawaii), from boycotting the speech.

In the address to Congress, Chirac called for an increase in foreign aid spending, noting that France spends $30 billion a year on aid to the developing world, three times as much as the United States.

“Let us not leave to their fate the poorest countries on Earth, in particular the African countries,” he said. He described foreign aid to these countries as “the best way of defusing a time bomb that is a threat to everyone.”

While Chirac hailed American policy in Bosnia in his public speeches, he was clearly not in complete agreement with it. At a reception, Chirac was overheard telling Secretary of State Warren Christopher and Assistant Secretary of State Richard Holbrooke that he disapproved of American plans to increase the strength of the Bosnian government army.

“I am very concerned about the policy of building up the Muslim army,” he said. “It is very dangerous.”

Holbrooke replied that under the peace accord the Bosnian government army will be strengthened only if no agreement is reached on cutting back the Bosnian Serb and Bosnian Croat armies.

At the two presidents’ joint news conference in the Old Executive Office Building next to the White House, most questions directed at Clinton were about domestic politics, not U.S.-French relations.

Asked if he was governing from the “left” while talking on the “right,” Clinton said he does not think so--though, he said, “I’m still a little to the left of Attila the Hun.”

The conservative Chirac, who noticed that Clinton was standing to his left, broke in, saying: “President Clinton has said he was to the left of Attila. Well, I didn’t feel that was aimed at me, quite honestly--whatever certain French journalists may feel about the subject.”

Clinton burst out laughing. “I’m not at all sure I’m to the left of President Chirac,” he said.