PARIS: In office only two months, France’s new foreign minister Dominique de Villepin has returned from his second trip to the Middle East — which last week took him to Lebanon, Syria and Jordan — and says that if there’s one message he’s conveyed to his hosts, it’s that France once again wants to play a key role in the region.

And in a first phase, that means, he’s suggested to his listeners, that France be accorded an important role in the organisation of Palestinian elections to be held in January of 2003.

Especially, he’s known to have insisted, as France has certainly been the Western country to maintain the closest ties with Palestinian president Yasser Arafat, indeed has often served as a protector of sorts to a man who never fails to exhibit before his French guests the Cross of Lorraine medal he wears around his neck which he says was given him by General Charles de Gaulle.

In Beirut, Damascus and Amman, Mr de Villepin has been letting it be known loud and clear that for the first time in five years France once again speaks with a single voice, this after five years of governmental cohabitation that saw a Gaullist President and Socialist Prime Minister often send contradictory signals with regard to France’s supposed Middle East policy.

Only back from Amman a few hours, Mr de Villepin leaves again on Monday for Moscow, where he is to discuss the Palestinian elections, among a number of subjects, and then, after a brief stopover in Paris, flies on to Washington on Thursday (July 11) where he is meet with Secretary of State Colin Powell, again to plead the cause of Palestine, and the necessity of freely-held democratic elections, to be held as soon as possible.

“Time is of the essence,” Mr de Villepin announces to a listener. “It is urgent that the international community do something now before the situation takes a turn for the worse.”

As he noted last week in Damascus, “what happens in your part of the world is of importance to us, for the simple reason that whatever you do out here will have important repercussions for us in our own part of the world.”

Among Mr de Villepin’s objectives is the establishment of an “international consensus,” as he puts it, with regard to the eventual objective of peace talks to be held either later this summer — this in spite of the present opposition to the idea by the United States — and perhaps in conjunction with the Summit of Francophone countries to be held from October 18-20 in Beirut.

And that objective, at least as far as Mr de Villepin is concerned, is creation of a Palestinian state whose frontiers with Israel would essentially follow those of the line of demarcation that existed prior to 1967.

As for the elections, Mr de Villepin insists that the European Union have, like France, an important logistical role to play with their organisation.

Also that they result in a new leadership. Which is why during his trip to Ramallah two weeks ago, the French foreign minister was charged with explaining to President Yasser Arafat that it would be best for him to step down and make way for younger blood.

Given the sensitivity of the request being made of Mr Arafat, and although the Palestinian President has indicated he would be running for reelection nevertheless — “if Chirac can do so, then why can’t I?,” he was heard to quip to a journalist — French diplomats are confident that between now and January they’ll be able to prevail upon him to gracefully step down.

And, with a view to bringing about his acquiescence to such a change — a virtual retirement from public affairs for a man who has never hidden his desire not only to not retire, but also to die fighting for the Palestinian cause — French diplomats have been in recent weeks preparing the accompanying measures that would allow Mr Arafat to “step down” from power, all the while saving face.

It’s a solution that might very well result in his departure for other parts of the world — and why not, added a French diplomat, Paris, one of the world’s preferred cities of exile — just selected by ex-Madagascar head of state Didier Ratsiraka — also a city known to be preferred by Mr Arafat’s spouse, a woman who speaks French fluently and who in recent years has not hidden her desire that she and President Arafat be allowed to spend their final days together in a more blissful environment than what they’ve known heretofore.