The New French Connection

Interesting passage in David Ignatius' Washington Post column:

The French Connection's impact is clear from some examples. Let's start with a secret trip to Damascus by Gourdault-Montagne in November 2003 to see Syrian President Bashar Assad. At the time, French-American relations were still in the deep freeze because of Chirac's refusal to support the U.S. invasion of Iraq, but the French were doing some early damage control. Gourdault-Montagne brought the Syrian leader a message from Chirac and two other critics of the Iraq war, German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The message to Assad was: The war has changed things in the Middle East, and you have to show you have changed, too -- by visiting Jerusalem or taking some other bold step for peace with Israel. The French were probably hoping to gain diplomatic leverage with Washington by acting as a peace broker, but that's not how Assad took it. "Are you the spokesman of the Americans?" he asked Gourdault-Montagne. Worried that France, Germany and Russia were joining a U.S. pressure campaign, a nervous Assad soon began trying to consolidate his control over Lebanon. He forced the reelection of Lebanon's pliant pro-Syrian president, Emile Lahoud, and began squeezing Syria's nemesis, Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri. That process culminated in Hariri's murder in February 2005.