An official Iraqi newspaper on Sunday criticized France for its stand on the decade-old embargo on Baghdad and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, charging Paris had failed to take an independent line from Washington.
"France has not managed to express its political independence from US policy," said Ath-Thawra, mouthpiece of the ruling Baath party, branding French policies as "hesitant and lacking clarity".
It accused Paris of adopting a "negative attitude" on flights to Baghdad despite a UN air embargo and on the whole sanctions regime in force since Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990.
"The lifting of the embargo is not only in Iraq's interest. It also serves the interests of France, Europe, and the entire world," the newspaper argued.
The French foreign ministry charged on November 28 that a decision by Jordan's national carrier Royal Jordanian to resume commercial flights to Baghdad was at odds with the UN curbs on trade links with Iraq.
France itself, however, has come in for criticism from the United States for sending what it called humanitarian flights to Iraq without waiting for clearance from a UN sanctions committee.
Ath-Thawra said France had also "adopted a negative attitude on the rights of the Palestinian people and not tried to play a positive and concrete role to achieve a balance between the Arabs and the Zionists in the (peace) negotiations".
Paris has failed to "condemn the daily Zionist aggressions against the Palestinian people, despite the deaths of more than 300 martyrs," it said. "France has limited itself to speaking of the need to halt the violence," like Washington -- BAGHDAD (AFP)
© 2000 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
