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Daily Press Briefing Statements made by [Please note that only the original French text issued by the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs may be considered official.]
FRANCE/MEXICO
Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin will make a working visit to Mexico on July 17 and 18.
The visit, planned some time ago, will give the minister an opportunity to emphasize the importance our country attaches to its partnership with Mexico in the political, economic and cultural spheres.
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The minister will meet with President Fox and have talks with his Mexican counterpart, Luis Ernesto Derbez. He will also meet Mr. Lopez Obrador, Mayor of Mexico City, and other political figures. He will address the executive committee of Congress on bilateral relations. Lastly he will meet with Mexicans in intellectual circles on July 18 at the Anthropological Museum of Mexico where he will speak on “The Frontier Spirit.”
Q - What does the minister mean by “frontier spirit”?
It will be about ideas on the theme of the frontier and its geostrategic importance.
Q - You said the visit had been planned some time ago but it comes at an important time for Mexico since the ruling party is going to lose the elections. How do you see the visit in this context?
The decision was made against the backdrop of a democratic process in Mexico, the move towards a multiparty system and a transparent democracy—that’s life as it really is.
Q - Will international issues be addressed?
International issues are of course on the agenda. Iraq, naturally, especially as Mexico is an important partner in the Security Council and a partner that very largely shares our way of seeing things. There’s broad agreement between us on multilateralism and the need to address all the issues in the context of the United Nations. I believe that a good many questions will in fact be discussed.
Q - Could you give us a few figures regarding economic relations between France and Mexico? My sense is they’re not very good and that France is not an important partner for Mexico.
On the contrary, France accounts for 6% of total foreign investment in Mexico, and French businesses together provide, speaking from memory, 90,000 direct jobs in the Mexican economy. French exports soared last year. We are Mexico’s 11th supplier and 14th client, and as far as exports are concerned, the picture is fairly balanced: one third, capital goods, one third, intermediate products, one third, consumer goods, with a substantial increase in the automobile sector.
Q - But France is behind Germany and other European countries?
We are the third European investor in Mexico after the UK and Germany—that’s quite significant, and we had 536 million euros in direct investments in 2001. It’s a developing partnership.
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Pierre-André Wiltzer attended the second African Union summit in Maputo from July 9-12, 2003.
The summit, which ended the transition period that began in 2002, is a milestone in the establishment of AU institutions, with the election of members of the Union Commission now chaired by Alpha Oumar Konaré.
Speeches by African heads of state revealed broad consensus on the priority to be accorded to the fight for peace and security, the basic conditions for development in Africa.
That priority is shared by France, witness the support we give to ECOWAS in Côte d’Ivoire, CEMAC in the Central African Republic, and European Union intervention in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
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Mr. Wiltzer’s visit to Maputo was an opportunity to emphasize France’s commitment to the fight against AIDS in Mozambique, specifically with the signing of a bilateral convention assigning five million euros to the fight against the pandemic.
Pierre-André Wiltzer, Minster Delegate for Cooperation and Francophony, will be taking part in this afternoon’s signing of the partnership agreement between UNAIDS, the School of Public Health in Brazil and the Foreign Ministry (...).
The signing of the convention is obviously to be seen against the backdrop of the meeting, which I announced on Friday, of the Global AIDS Fund, which is currently being held in Paris.
I would like to draw your attention to the two communiqués we issued over the long weekend.
The first deals with the formation of a transitional government council in Iraq:
“France takes notes with interest of the formation of a transitional government council in Iraq, set up with the help of the coalition authority and in close collaboration with the UN secretary-general’s special representative in accordance with paragraph 9 of Security Council resolution 1483.
“This is a positive first step in the process which must lead rapidly to the re-establishment of Iraq’s complete sovereignty and the Iraqis’ full control of their future.”
We also issued a statement last night in connection with the intelligence regarding Iraq’s nuclear program
“Contrary to the insinuations that have appeared in the British press, France is not the origin of intelligence published in the British report dated September 24, 2002 and relating to Iraq’s nuclear program.”
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Q - Are you going to deal directly with this council, officially, as being representative of the Iraqi people?
We have an interests sections there, as you know, consisting of several diplomats. In the context of their mission, their work, they will certainly have contacts with the interim authority and with all the political actors present on the spot.
Q - So do you recognize this authority?
As you know, France’s policy is to recognize states not governments. So the question doesn’t come up in those terms.
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Q - About Mr. Talabani’s delegation. Is he being seen as a member of the interim authority?
Initially, Mr. Talabani was granted the meeting as the representative of his party. The situation changed over the weekend but that doesn’t alter the fact that he has a meeting with Dominique de Villepin this evening at 5 p.m.
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Q - Do you know if the date for ratifying NATO enlargement has already been set?
The process is under way—it’ll probably be completed by early fall. The parliamentary procedure has been started.
Q - What does that mean?
It’s a formal process, as you know, requiring consultation of parliament, and this process has already been started. It'll likely be concluded in the fall, but the powers are separate in France, and we have no control over the timetable of parliamentary proceedings. But so far as the executive is concerned, the procedure has been set in train.
Q - We’ve still no news of our correspondent in Ingushetia and it’s been about two weeks since he was kidnapped. What are the most recent contacts you’ve had?
The last formal contact, as I think I’ve said, was at last week’s meeting of the joint committee on security issues in Moscow when Dominique de Villepin spoke about it at length with his Russian counterpart, Igor Ivanov. The latter promised to speed up the inquiry, and obviously our embassy in Moscow is in permanent contact with the authorities of the Russian Federation to try to find out what has happened to Mr. Astamirov.
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Our cooperation with Cuba has been re-evaluated. It will effectively mean ending a series of projects that fall within the institutional cooperation category. I’ll just give you one example: there have been actions for police training. This stops.
On the other hand, we are trying to emphasize projects which benefit civil society, individuals--everything for example involving health and education programs, agronomy, everything which, I repeat, does not involve governmental institutions but individual partners.
Q - Could you give us some figures?
No, not specifically. To give you some idea of what we’re talking about, I believe that Franco-Cuban cooperation this year was in the order of 2.5 million euros, perhaps a little more. There were margins for some redeployment. We are also going to try to give preference to independent beneficiaries, for example, farm cooperatives that are not public, and independent artists.
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Q - About Western Sahara. Apparently it’s going to be discussed in the Security Council during the Spanish presidency. What will France’s position be on the second Baker plan?
At this stage I can say that talks on the Baker plan are continuing in New York as you know. There have already been several sessions of consultations and discussions in the Council. I can say that in France’s view, clearly the matter of Western Sahara will not be resolved without the agreement of all the parties concerned. That for us is one of the constants that we have always maintained on this question.
Q - Do you have any comment on the situation? Has France been solicited by Mr. Sharon to ask the European countries to boycott Mr. Arafat? Has France received a letter or been asked verbally?
I don’t believe that we’ve received any such request, certainly not in writing. But you know our position on this, we’ve stated it time and again. We believe that Mr. Arafat, the elected president of the Palestinians, cannot be circumvented, and we wish to see all the Palestinian partners involved in all the progress that still has to be achieved in implementing the Quartet’s road-map.
With that said, I cannot emphasize enough that we are fully aligned with the European position as set out at the European council in Athens and reaffirmed at the council in Thessalonika in June./.
Embassy of France, July 15, 2003
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