November 08, 2006	Wednesday	Shawwal 15, 1427

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ISLAMABAD, Nov 7: A seminar on the global security perspectives and worldviews of Pakistan and France made a revealing start here on Tuesday - that the foreign policies of both countries flow from their chief executives.

Prof Serge Sur of the University of Paris-2 told the first session of the seminar devoted to foreign policy makers that “the role of the French government (in making the foreign policy) is secondary”.

But then, being elected by popular vote, the French president represented “the main orientation and continuation” of France’s Constitution, he noted. The French president can even declare war without seeking parliament’s approval.

“Parliament’s role has been dramatically reduced to stabilising and rationalising (French) life,” he remarked.

Additional Secretary Zamir Akram of the Prime Minister’s Secretariat who spoke after him said his “experience” was that decision-making in Pakistan was the exclusive domain of “the executive branch of the state”.

Islamabad’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs only makes recommendations to the chief executive, based on inputs from its own staff, other government departments, media, think tanks and pressure groups.

What importance “he or she” gave to the recommendations depended entirely on the chief executive, he said.

“I refer to ‘chief executive’ throughout,” he said, explaining that the authority of the office has vested at various times in the president, or the prime minister, or the two together.

“A huge role is played by important personalities, sometimes much beyond the accepted norms of a given policy,” he said.

“The chief executive may evolve policy decisions without taking the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in confidence. There are examples when chief executives pursued dual policies - one overt the other covert, based on calculations or compulsions”.

However, he noted that “at times we have seen the effectiveness of a policy created by a chief executive”.

What worried him were the “conflicting policies”, and even more the “competitive policies”, that different ministries or centres of power pursued such as President Ziaul Haq and Prime Minister Mohammad Khan Junejo relating to the Geneva Accords on withdrawal of Soviet occupying forces from Afghanistan in 1988 and by Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and the army chief Gen Mirza Aslam Beg over the first US-led war on Iraq in 1990.

Pakistan’s decision to carry out nuclear tests, in the face of tremendous pressure from outside not to do that, was a case study in taking decisions with the broadest consultations and consensus, he said.

In the France of Fifth Republic, created by President Charles de Gaulle in 1958, the foreign policy is intertwined with the defence policy to serve as the main tool of the domestic policy, according to Prof Sur.

“What is good for the French firms is good for the French state” was said to be the guiding principle.

French ambassador Regis de Belenet smiled shyly when Prof Sur said the French foreign ministry was a preserve of the elite. Its diplomats come from the upper or upper middle class in pursuit of what he called “kidocracy”.

Prof Sur caused another stir by observing that “a lot of NGOs are active in France but they do not really influence the French foreign policy - only when they make a coalition on an issue at international level” and that the foreign and defence ministries “can use the NGOs as tools”.

Earlier, inaugurating the seminar Mr Inamul Haque, chairman of the Institute of Strategic Studies Islamabad, which organised the seminar together with the French embassy, questioned the US and its allies on their pursuit of war on terror, globalisation, and doctrines of pre-emption and regime change.

“We live in an unjust and dangerous world. That has become more evident after 9/11,” he said, warning that global security cannot be established through force and economic exploitation of the weak.