June 15, 2003	Sunday	Rabi-us-Sani 14, 1424

PARIS, June 14: France’s defence minister took a double swipe at the United States on Saturday, accusing her counterpart Donald Rumsfeld of American supremacism and US industry of waging “economic war” on Europe.

Michele Alliot-Marie’s remarks, in a newspaper interview, were the bluntest criticism of Washington by a French official since presidents Jacques Chirac and George W. Bush skirted around their differences on Iraq at a summit two weeks ago.

“The American Defense Secretary (Donald Rumsfeld) believes the United States is the only military, economic and financial power in the world. We do not share this vision,” Alliot-Marie told Le Monde newspaper in the interview published on Saturday.

The suggestion of superpower arrogance comes days after Rumsfeld revisited the scene of recent bickering over France’s opposition to the Iraq war by distinguishing between “old” and “new” Europe — language which had infuriated Paris in January.

Back in January, Rumsfeld had dismissed France and Germany as “old Europe” in contrast to a “new Europe” of mostly eastern European countries more supportive of Washington. He repeated the controversial barb in Germany on Wednesday.

Alliot-Marie said military and intelligence co-operation between Paris and Washington had been unaffected by the split over Iraq. The Pentagon, however, said last month France would not be invited to a major military exercise in Nevada next year.

BOURGET BOYCOTT: The fallout from the Iraq row was on stark display on Saturday as top US military and aerospace figures boycotted the opening of the Paris Air Show — a prestigious event held every two years to the noise of American flypasts.

This time, the Pentagon banned the traditional flying displays by its military pilots and scaled down its presence at the Le Bourget show in what is widely seen as a deliberate snub.

In her interview, timed to coincide with the world’s largest air show, Alliot-Marie urged European firms to stand together to resist what she called an American “economic war”.

“American industrialists are pursuing a logic of economic war,” she said in the interview, which Le Monde daily said had been read and cleared by her office before publication.

“This attitude is not connected to the Iraq episode. Faced with this, European industry must regroup in order to be in a better position to resist,” she added.—Reuters