PARIS: France says it will be relaunching its foreign policy with regard to the Gulf states, and to this end President Jacques Chirac is sending this week to the UAE, Kuwait, Bahrain, Oman and Qatar, a personal envoy, Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs Renaud Muselier, who will carry a special message from the president to each country’s head of state.

A Quai d’Orsay spokesman said that the new policy preferences would first be communicated to France’s principal interlocutors in that part of the world.

According to another Foreign Ministry official, however, a perhaps more appropriate expression to describe the change that France envisions with regard to its relations with the Gulf states would be that what it plans to do is undertake a major “reinforcement” of its present policy.

“But,” adds the spokesman, “beyond any problem of terminology, what remains of the utmost importance for us is that these are countries to which we have always paid the greatest attention, with which, moreover, we have in all areas the strongest of relations.”

As an example of what forms this reinforced cooperation might take, the Quai d’Orsay official noted that during his visit to Qatar, Muselier would inaugurate a new French cultural center at Doha.

Besides meeting with the heads of state of the countries he will visit, Muselier will be received by each country’s French community to deal with questions regarding not only France’s relations with the host country, but also such other problems as the security of French nationals residing in an increasingly dangerous part of the world.