OBAMA PREFERS CHIRAC !
French article ; English translation below
Barack Obama does not seem to know that in May 2007, French voters elected Nicolas Sarkozy to the French presidency, to succeed Jacques Chirac who had been president for twelve years.
Yesterday, we told you Sarkozy is irritated because Mister O. refuses to tell him if he will accept to meet him personally in the next few months.
Strangely, we have just learnt this surprising piece of news :
Barack Obama wrote a letter to Jacques Chirac to tell him about his desire to "work with him" for the next four years !
In a letter described by Chirac as "very nice," Obama wrote, "I am certain that we will be able to work together, in the coming four years, in a spirit of peace and friendship to build a safer world."
The use of the word "peace" was taken to be an indirect reference to Chirac's stance against the US intervention in Iraq, which Obama had also opposed.
This revelation was made by the online edition of the daily Le Figaro on Thursday.
So, if I understand well, Mister O., who has already despised Gordon Brown, behaving with him as if he did not know he is Prime Minister of Britain, does not even know the name of the French president.
I wonder if someone had told him, when he came to France last summer, that the man he met was NOT Jacques Chirac !
In any case, for Sarko, the blow must be terrible : he has tried to persuade Obama to invite him in Washington for months, and now he learns that his predecessor might soon be Obama's guest at the White House before him !