Elaine Ganley
French Conservatives Dealt Crushing Blow
Mon Mar 29 17:33:03 2004
63.228.144.66

Tuesday, Mar. 30, 2004.

French Conservatives Dealt Crushing Blow
By Elaine Ganley
The Associated Press
http://www.themoscowtimes.com/stories/2004/03/30/258.html

PARIS -- In its most impressive electoral showing in a generation, France's left bulldozed its way across France in regional elections with a crushing defeat of President Jacques Chirac's government, which sets the stage for a Cabinet shakeup.

Sunday's victory march by the reborn opposition Socialists and their leftist allies isolated the conservative president with a losing team and an unpopular party midway through his five-year term.

The results jolted the political landscape to its core and amounted to an angry call to the French leadership to change course. Painful reforms instituted to save the social security system from bankruptcy and bring France's budget deficit in line with European Union rules have turned wide swaths of French society against Chirac's governing conservatives.

For Chirac -- who hit a peak in popularity at home as the leading voice against the United States over the Iraq war -- the electoral drubbing for the right has forced him to refocus on his domestic flank.

Radio and television reports referred to a "tidal wave" for the Socialist-led opposition, and some left-leaning newspapers appeared to gloat over the victory.

"The knockout of the right," read a front-page headline on Communist daily L'HumanitО. Left-leaning LibОration led its cover with "The beginning of the end" over a photo of a pensive Chirac.

Many political observers were speculating whether he will now fire Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin, his comrade-in-arms who has sought to bring about thorny domestic reforms, as part of a widely expected Cabinet shuffle.

Raffarin, whom Chirac lifted from the provinces to the premiership two years ago to carry out the reforms, stood firm.

"The reforms must continue simply because they are necessary," Raffarin insisted Sunday. He defended his government's action, but said he understood the "worry and impatience" that was expressed by voters.

Socialist Party leader FranНois Hollande said the victory for the left was the biggest since fellow Socialist FranНois Mitterrand won the presidency in 1981. He urged the government to change course entirely -- not simply rejigger its lineup of ministers.

Speaking Monday on French radio, Hollande pinned the blame on Chirac. "What has been condemned is not just the management of Jean-Pierre Raffarin, but a defect of the presidency," he told RTL radio.

The Socialists, combining forces with the Communist Party and the Greens, won 20 out of mainland France's 22 regions, holding onto the eight it already ran and conquering 12 others. Results from four overseas regions were not immediately available.

Conservatives ended the day with only one region secured -- Alsace, in eastern France -- and possibly Corsica. Nineteen of 38 government ministers were candidates in the races -- and all of them lost.

Voters were choosing regional councils that decide issues from building schools to improving public transportation. But the contest was seen as a referendum on Raffarin's increasingly unpopular team.

================

PARIS, France -- French President Jacques Chirac will respond in the next few days to the rout of his governing conservatives in regional elections, aides say.
http://edition.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/europe/03/29/france.vote/

WASHINGTON -- U.S. President George W. Bush has formally welcomed the addition of seven new members to the NATO alliance during a ceremony on Monday.
http://edition.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/europe/03/29/nato.expansion/index.html

"If significant NATO military bases appear near Russia's borders and change the balance of forces in this region, then we can't exclude that Russia will consider the possibility of taking corresponding action so that the balance is not breached," he said.

NATO has tried to convince Moscow the expansion is not directed at Russia, but NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, who was at the White House for Monday's ceremony, told CNN much needed to be done to strengthen NATO-Russian ties.

"We need, in the interests of NATO and in the interests of Russia, a strong partnership, which means that we not only discuss the easy things but also the harder nuts to crack in that relationship," he said.

U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell last week said Russia should view a larger NATO not as a threat, but as a partner.

NATO was established on April 4, 1949 by 12 nations: Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, United Kingdom and the United States.