February 19, 2002	Tuesday	Zilhaj 6, 1422

PARIS, Feb 18: After French Foreign Minister Hubert Vedrine, criticized in recent days by US officials for his characterization of American foreign policy as being over-simplistic, it’s now the turn of French Finance Minister Laurent Fabius to be in Washington’s line of fire for comments he recently made that are considered as disparaging to the United States.

What is particularly ironic about the US reaction is that Fabius, who is a Socialist and a former Prime Minister of France, has usually been viewed by Washington as being more or less favourable to its ideas, especially in the realm of the economy.

Indeed, any criticism that Fabius has received until now has concerned allegations that he is too partial to the United States, criticism moreover that comes usually from his own political party, the Parti Socialiste (PS), whose titular head, Prime Minister Lionel Jospin, has let it be known that he thinks Fabius a trifle too partial to US-style ideas that favour a greater degree of economic liberalism and a corresponding decrease in governmental economic intervention.

As for Fabius, his error, at least in Washington’s eyes, concerns a remark he made this weekend according to which he found US policy “incomprehensible” on developmental assistance to the world’s poorer countries, this as part of a theory according to which Washington might best think about eradicating the “root causes” of terrorism, rather than concentrate its attention on rather brutally attacking its symptoms.

He regretted, said Fabius, that the United States did not share his ideal that developmental assistance to the Third World be substantially increased, and suggested that he sometimes felt he was up against a brick wall when it came to convincing Washington that it should pay its fair share of support for the world’s poorer nations.

“If we want to assure our future stability,” Fabius was quoted as saying, “we evidently have to increase our developmental assistance.”

Still, he noted his displeasure with the United States, for not sharing our analysis” of the sorry state of development in the Third World, indeed accused Washington of purposely “refusing to understand” the gravity of the situation of many less developed nations.

Fabius’ remarks were made in the context of preparations being made by France to participate in the summit of heads of state to be held March 18-24 in Mexico.

The remarks made by Fabius on the “incomprehensible” nature of US refusal to increase developmental assistance to the Third World are expected to be at the center of conversations to be had this week in Paris between French authorities and Elizabeth Jones, Assistant Secretary for European Affairs at the US Department of State.