posted on February 28, 2003 01:08:35 PM newPresident Jacques Chirac is under pressure from key supporters who fear that France's opposition to war with Iraq could cripple relations with the United States, wreck the United Nations and leave France isolated.
While not a signal that France is about to change its drive to extend U.N. weapons inspections in Iraq, leaders of Chirac's political party are voicing concern about the repercussions of a showdown with Washington, and what it might cost their country.
Above all a bloc of so-called "Atlanticist" lawmakers from the conservative Union for the Parliamentary Majority, or UMP, are concerned about what will happen if France uses its veto as one of the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council to block Washington.
Saying he believes war on Iraq is inevitable, pro-American UMP lawmaker Herve de Charette said Thursday the use of a veto "is a decision with great ramifications, of great gravity."
De Charette, a former foreign minister, noted that France has not used its veto against the United States since the crisis over the Suez Canal in 1956.
"A veto is unimaginable," Claude Goasguen, another senior conservative lawmaker, told daily Le Monde in its Thursday edition. "We are not going to break the United Nations and Europe just to save a tyrant," he said, referring to Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.
