February 4, 2003	Tuesday	Zul Hijjah 2,1423

PARIS, Feb 3: US National Security Adviser Condoleeza Rice, in an effort to convince the French to support a new resolution that President George W Bush is expected to introduce this week before the UN Security Council, has decided to take to the airwaves and has accorded a rare exclusive interview to French public channel France 3.

Although she chose not to detail the resolution that the Bush administration was drafting, and which she said would be introduced at the United Nations later this week, Ms Rice said if French public opinion were so overwhelmingly against a US-led attack on Iraq, it was, in her estimation, “because they haven’t yet been given the full picture.”

“French public opinion has to be guided, to be able to know what is truly at issue,” she said when asked why, in her estimation, more than 75 per cent of the French have consistently been opposed to the US war plans against Iraq.

“If (French) public opinion had a greater consciousness of the situation,” she continued, “they might be getting the full picture” of what she described as the “menace” that hung over France and Europe, and which she claimed had already been amply manifested by the discovery of the ricin plot in London and the revelation of an important Al-Qaeda network in Europe which was largely implanted on French soil.