EVEN THE ARAB NEWS is unhappy with Jacques Chirac’s diplomatic gaffes:

President Jacques Chirac’s outburst at central and eastern European governments such as Poland and the Czech Republic for daring to take the US point of view is astounding. To threaten doing so might endanger their applications to join the EU could undermine the very policy that Chirac champions.

To ridicule them publicly, saying that they have not behaved properly and have missed an historic opportunity to keep quiet, is hardly the way to make friends and influence people. This is the same blustering, steamroller approach that the White House has used to such damaging effect on the world stage. President Bush’s “either you’re with us or against us” statement, his arrogant assumption that Washington knows best and that everyone else has to fall into line behind it have done more to alienate international public opinion than the evident bellicosity of his Iraqi policy; other governments are not going to be told what to do by Washington. It is incredible then that Chirac should try to do the same on a European stage. All Chirac has done is to exacerbate anti-French feeling in Europe. The result will not be European governments falling into line behind France on Iraq, but the opposite. Indeed, from the furor it has created in Eastern Europe, that is already happening.

Heh. Comparing Chirac to Bush is really rubbing salt in the wound. “Me, compared to that cowboy? Incroyable!”