Today's Date:

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Dear Friends of the French-American Foundation,

I would like first to thank Liz Fondaras for inviting me again to address tonight's 25th anniversary dinner of the French-American Foundation. And in addition to thanking her, I'd also like to pay tribute to a very remarkable person; Liz's commitment to French-American friendship is absolutely unfailing. She has consistently used her talents, energy and imagination to serve the Foundation generously and effectively.

My dear Liz, I am delighted to see sitting next to you the new President of the Foundation, Anthony Smith. As a man with a military sense of organization, and a francophile, Anthony Smith's talents will, I know, be extremely useful to the Foundation. I offer him my best wishes and full support, and naturally the support of the Embassy and all the official French services in the United States.

I'd also like to take this opportunity to commend the Foundation for its wonderful contribution in promoting a better understanding between our two countries.

Everybody knows that, however close and even intimate our relationship is, French-American relations are unique in many ways and, together with a profound sense of friendship and alliance, have also had their share of misunderstandings, incomprehension, stereotypes and ready-to-wear wrong ideas.

Because it is people-oriented, and because it promotes exchanges of people almost as much as exchanges of views between the two sides of the Atlantic, the French-American Foundation has, in its twenty-five years of existence, done a lot to strengthen the friendship between France and the United States which goes back more than two hundred years, and was born in the American War of Independence.

Founded on a solidarity that has never failed, from the battlefields of Yorktown to the beaches of Normandy and through all the major crises of the last half century (Korea to Cuba to the Gulf War and now terrorism), the friendship between our two countries is truly unique and especially strong because it is rooted in shared values. As I've often said, the dream of the founding fathers in America readily melds with the ideals of the French Revolution. We are truly partners in liberty. It is no accident that an American woman and a Frenchman, Eleanor Roosevelt and René Cassin, wrote the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, more than 50 years ago now, in 1949.

This community of values is today our most precious asset, and enables us to address together the new challenges that characterize this new and very uncertain era, first and foremost, of course, terrorism.

After the horrific attacks that so deeply wounded America, and maimed the city of New York, the very profound solidarity that unites France and the United States in this trial illustrates once again the lesson of our common history: that whenever the essential is at issue, whenever the values underlying our civilization are threatened, when the chips are down, our two countries find themselves quite naturally at each other's side in the same combat.

President Jacques Chirac was thus naturally the first foreign head of state to come to the U.S. after September 11, to meet on September 18 with President Bush at the White House, and to pay a visit to Mayor Giuliani and to the wounded city of New York on September 19. He came to express the "total solidarity" of the French people and the French authorities. He put it quite forcefully: "France will be in the front line in the combat against international terrorist networks, shoulder to shoulder with America, its ally forever."

Actually as soon as it learned of the September 11 tragedy, France expressed its complete solidarity with an America wounded to the core. If I had to take just one example, it would be the solemn ceremony in tribute to the victims, held a few days later in the courtyard of the Elysée, attended by President Jacques Chirac and the American Ambassador to Paris, Howard Leach, the two flags flying at half mast. It was the first time in history that the national anthem of a country other than France, the "Star Spangled Banner," rang out in the courtyard of the Elysée.

But the reaction was not confined to officialdom. All of France has been with America in thought. Le Monde (not exactly a paragon of exalted americanophilia, in normal circumstances), got it right when it aptly titled its editorial, "We are all Americans," a sentence that has been much quoted since. The spontaneous outpourings of sympathy and solidarity from ordinary French people in all walks of life with all sorts of convictions illustrated the magnitude of this flow of emotion. The American Embassy in Paris was literally swamped with messages of sympathy and support: sympathy from French people overwhelmed by such barbarous acts against a friendly country, and support from people who, as Prime Minister Lionel Jospin said, are still profoundly grateful to their great American ally who twice aided them in the darkest hours of their history.

The solidarity between France and the United States expresses itself all the more forcefully because our two countries share the same fundamental convictions in setting out to fight against terrorism.

The first conviction: terrorism represents the absolute evil. It is a threat to our civilization and an attack on our values, and therefore must be completely rooted out; this requires the fight to be waged on all fronts--military, but also diplomatic, financial, law-enforcement, judicial cooperation, and so on.

The second conviction: the fight against terrorism has nothing to do with what bin Laden and his accomplices would have us believe, that it is a "crusade" led by the Judeo-Christian West against Islam. Far from it. That is the trap, as crude as it is diabolical, the terrorists have set for us. The fight against terrorism is not and must not lead to a "clash of civilizations." President Bush said rightly that the terrorists have indeed hijacked Islam to pursue their own agenda of hatred. And we would also do well to remember, as French Foreign Minister Hubert Védrine repeatedly pointed out, that terrorism has to this day still caused more victims in the Arab-Muslim world than in the Western countries.

Strengthened by these shared convictions, the cooperation on the fight against terrorism between our two countries has grown closer every day. I will just mention here a few telling examples:

Regarding the current military operations in Afghanistan--and again this is something Mr. Chirac recalled a few days ago on his second visit to the U.S. since September 11--France has already deployed 2,000 soldiers in the region who are part of the present operations. They are serving with the naval, air reconnaissance and intelligence units that France has sent to the area on the sea, in the air and on the ground. The French authorities have repeatedly said they are prepared to send special forces to Afghanistan. Franco-American military cooperation reflects a high degree of trust and is very close. It is being furthered in particular through the liaison mission that France has established with the American command in the central zone (CENTCOM) (Tampa), which is gradually being built up and now takes part in American planning.

On the diplomatic front, the French authorities, led by President Jacques Chirac and Foreign Minister Védrine, have repeatedly taken our message to the Arab-Muslim world since September 11. President Chirac's recent tour this week of Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, to give you just one example, is part of this effort. During his talks with President Bush in Washington on November 6, his second visit to Washington since September 11, and then with U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan in New York, President Chirac particularly stressed the importance of intensifying our common efforts on the following three fronts.

Front number one: the political transition in Afghanistan. To make a long story short, the purpose is to get a post-Taliban regime founded on as broad a representation as possible of Afghanistan's ethnic and geographic diversity, and to this end to entrust an important role to the Secretary-General's special representative on Afghanistan, Mr. Brahimi. And while we're talking about the Security Council, I'd just like to remind you that it was France, then in the chair of the Security Council, that drafted and introduced resolution 1368, adopted on September 12, which recognized America's right of self-defense.

Second front: the humanitarian situation in Afghanistan. President Chirac has proposed that an international conference should be urgently convened to avert the humanitarian catastrophe threatening Afghanistan with the arrival of winter. Talks are going on right now in New York on this issue.

And front number three: the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. France and its European partners have consistently insisted on the grave dangers induced by the constant degradation of the situation since the collapse of the peace talks, and stressed how essential it is to take back the initiative, with the United States of course, so as to break the spiral of violence and revive the prospect of a political solution. Urgent as this is in itself, improvement on the ground in the Near East and a resumption of the peace process would also deprive the terrorists and all the extremists of one of the pretexts they feed on. You could of course argue that this will not stop terrorism by a magical stroke. But we must look at it the other way: absence of solution and pursuit of unchecked violence on both sides can only fuel frustrations and hatred that are the feed of terrorism. That is why President Chirac recently proposed a negotiating framework that would include the parties, the United States, the European Union, Russia and the U.N. Secretary-General, together with Egypt and Jordan if they would like to be present. .

I would like to add that France, on the strength of its own long experience in the fight against terrorism, is fully assisting the U.S. in the current investigations into the September 11 attacks.

We in France have suffered two waves of terrorist attacks and acquired the hard way lots of experience in staying one step ahead of terrorists and penetrating and dismantling networks. This experience is proving invaluable in post-September 11 investigations, as the Wall Street Journal itself recently pointed out.

Lastly, I must mention that France has been a leader in taking action on the issue of financing of terrorism for some time. France has been instrumental in drafting the Universal Convention on Terrorist Financing at the end of 1999, on the basis of a Franco-American cooperation that can only be considered exemplary. Similarly, our two countries worked together to get Security Council Resolution 1373 passed, which for the first time sets out a number of specific obligations in this domain.

Partners in liberty indeed, you can see that, as they have been at each important stage in their history, France and the United States are naturally side by side in the fight against the hydra of terrorism. We will pursue this fight relentlessly, and develop along the way an even closer cooperation.

Let's not be mistaken : we have entered a long tunnel, and this new war is not going to end anytime soon. We will need to be patient, to persevere and to remain fully focused. We will also need to avoid the many pitfalls that the complexity of the situation in the Middle East and Central Asia can create for our common effort, to pay attention to the fragility of some of our key partners in the coalition, like Pakistan or Saudi Arabia, and to the fragilities of our own public opinions, particularly in Europe and in the moderate Arab countries, as they express though the press or the NGOs humanitarian concerns and an understandable repulsion at the devastation brought by war in already impoverished areas.

We must also remember that the aftermath of the September 11 horror doesn't look the same, seen in the ghostly shadow of the Twin Towers, as it does seen from Cairo, Islamabad, Jakarta, or even Copenhagen, Berlin or Paris.

But we must also remember that the attacks perpetrated against New York and Washington were attacks on us all, on our common ideals and values, on our common beliefs.

The French understand that very well. In the light of September 11 we, indeed, are all Americans. In bringing its full support, France will remain true to itself : a staunch ally, with a strong individuality. We will, as always, express our views, offer our interpretations, sometimes differ in our judgments. In so doing, we will be, as always, a true friend. We share the same cause, and we will share the effort. America once again, and maybe more than ever, can count on France.