Stardate 20030416.1725

(On Screen): After French diplomats begged the White House, Bush allowed 20 minutes for a phone call with Chirac, where Chirac did his best to try to patch up relations, or to try to put one over on Bush.

Before the call could be arranged, Jean-David Levitte, the French ambassador to Washington, had to lobby Karl Rove, Mr Bush's chief political strategist, and Stephen Hadley, the deputy national security adviser, at the White House.

Final American agreement to the call was secured only after discussions on Monday between Colin Powell, the US secretary of state, and Dominique de Villepin, the French foreign minister.

The French are reduced at this point to having to apply the full force of their diplomacy simply to get us to pay attention to them. One imagines Powell asking de Villepin, "What could Chirac have to say that we could possibly have any interest in listening to?" I doubt he was that cold or blunt (more's the pity) but reportedly Powell now detests de Villepin, and it's doubtful that these discussions were in any way warm or friendly.

There's no particular sign that Chirac's antics had much effect, but he seems to be trying to say that France is no longer going to be a roadblock and wants to be "pragmatic" and to take issues one at a time on their merits (as distinct from their previous stance linking every possible issue to the global one of opposition to the war, which is why they opposed NATO deployment of missile defense systems to defend Turkey, a member of the alliance).

French spin on the call was enthusiastic and positive; reports from the US government less so. Diplomats use code-words for this kind of thing; Ari Fleischer referred to the call as "business-like" which means that the atmosphere was cool and that nothing important was accomplished. (It could have been worse. It could have been "a frank exchange of opinions", which means that voices get raised.)

The process of dealing France out of the game has already begun. The US asked Danish PM Rasmussen to put together a stabilisation force of 3000 as soon as possible to help patrol Iraqi cities. He's been talking to Spain, Italy, Poland, Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia, among others. He isn't talking to the French. (Even though they've indicated willingness to help.)

And French businesses are noticing a worrying trend:

The anger towards France is deeper and more pervasive. French firms have suffered a loss of income from cancelled American orders and officials argue that the successful French attempt to scupper a second United Nations resolution extended far beyond M Chirac.

Nicolas Gailly, head of the company Barton et Guestier which claims to be the biggest French wine seller in the United States, admitted sales had gone down, saying American distributors were making less effort to market French products. "It's not politically correct to promote French products generally and wine in particular," he said.

I think there's a cool breeze blowing up their back here. This isn't the result of US government action. It's the result of individual choices by American consumers and American businessmen, and as such it is not possible for France to appeal to the WTO or any other kind of international organization. There is no law or treaty that forces Americans to purchase anything from France. And in the case of wine in particular, there's a very real danger that this loss of market could become permanent. French wines are indeed superb, but there are superb wines from many places and they cost less. I don't drink so I can't testify to this out of personal experience, but I understand that there are superb imported wines from Chile and Australia, and California has been producing world-class wines for at least 30 years. French wines command the prices they do mostly out of snob appeal, and that may be gone now.

So here's their chance to pretend to begin the healing process. There have been sanctions in place against Iraq since the first Gulf war ended in 1991, to try to compel Saddam to comply with requirements to disarm. Since Saddam is no longer in charge in Iraq, and is probably dead, and since the occupying powers are going to find and eliminate any remaining forbidden weapons in Iraq, the sanctions no longer make any sense at all and could impede the process of rebuilding Iraq and making things better for Iraq's civilians, now awakening from a 30 year nightmare.

This isn't vital. Nothing that the UN does or doesn't do or threatens is a show-stopper, as our willingness to fight without yet another UNSC resolution demonstrated. If the UN doesn't act in the right fashion, we'll ignore the UN and go on without it. Which means that not only is lifting the sanctions clearly right on the merits, it's also realpolitik. Any intransigence here will only harm the UN itself, which has a