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DE RUEHFR #1995/01 1380920
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O 180920Z MAY 07
FM AMEMBASSY PARIS
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC IMMEDIATE 7292
RHEHNSC/NSC WASHINGTON DC IMMEDIATE
INFO RUEHZL/EUROPEAN POLITICAL COLLECTIVE PRIORITY
RUCNRAQ/IRAQ COLLECTIVE PRIORITY
RUEHBUL/AMEMBASSY KABUL PRIORITY 0487
RUEKJCS/SECDEF WASHINGTON DC PRIORITY

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 02 PARIS 001995 

SIPDIS 

SIPDIS 

DEPT FOR EUR; NSC FOR AINSLEY/BAIRD 

E.O. 12958: DECL: 01/01/2017 
TAGS: PREL FR EUN NATO ECON SENV AF IQ RS TU PGOV
YI, UNO, IR, LE 
SUBJECT: THE PRESIDENT'S JUNE 6 MEETING WITH FRENCH 
PRESIDENT SARKOZY 

REF: A. PARIS 1844 
¶B. PARIS 1871 

Classified By: CDA Thomas J. White for reasons 1.4 (B & D). 

¶1. (C) The meeting between the President and French 
President Nicolas Sarkozy in Heiligendamm June 6 will be 
their first official encounter since then-Interior Minister 
Sarkozy met briefly with the President on September 12, 2006. 
The two presidents will meet on the same day that Defense 
Secretary Gates and new French Defense Minister Herve Morin 

SIPDIS 
commemorate D-Day on the beaches of Normandy. France's new 
President -- who has promised France's citizens that he will 
say what he will do and do what he has said -- has declared 
that improving France's relationship with the United States 
is one of his top priorities. We should take him at his word 
and seek to exploit this opening to reinvigorate our 
strategic relationship with France, since close cooperation 
with France -- bilaterally, within NATO, at the UNSC, and 
through the EU -- is a key force multiplier. 

¶2. (C) That said, we will need to take into account the fact 
that Sarkozy was elected President primarily with a mandate 
for domestic reform. He will devote his first weeks and 
months in office to delivering on his promises and 
implementing that mandate. Even if Sarkozy handily wins the 
June legislative elections, as currently expected, he will 
face vigorous opposition from those with entrenched 
interests, including unions and the coalition of students and 
their parents who fear a loss of France's vaunted social 
protections. In the foreign policy arena, as was made clear 
in his May 16 meeting with German Chancellor Merkel on the 
same day he assumed office, Sarkozy will focus in the short 
term on the run-up to the June 21-22 EU Council meeting as a 
means of finally re-imparting institutional momentum 
following the French and Dutch rejection of the EU 
constitutional treaty. 

¶3. (C) The President will want to welcome Sarkozy's election 
and the possibilities it represents for reforming and 
re-energizing France and Europe, while acknowledging the 
challenges that Sarkozy faces in the years ahead. Sarkozy 
greatly enjoys political strategizing (the basis of his close 
relationship with UK PM Blair), and can be expected to talk 
at some length about his strategy of moving toward the 
center, winning the upcoming legislative elections, and 
pushing through an ambitious reform program in his first 
months of office. 

¶4. (C) The President should also welcome Sarkozy's 
commitment to a U.S.-French relationship based on mutual 
confidence and candor, and will want to address Sarkozy's 
desire for frequent contact on the full range of issues. We 
should suggest that NSA Hadley would hope to have the same 
kind of close relationship with Sarkozy's diplomatic advisor, 
Jean-David Levitte, and seek Sarkozy's agreement that they be 
mandated to begin a quiet dialogue on how we might 
reinvigorate the U.S.-French strategic relationship, 
including through a larger and more positive French 
leadership role within NATO. The President can assure 
Sarkozy that this would not be at the expense of the EU -- we 
do not see this as zero-sum -- but that we are striving for a 
win-win outcome for both organizations. 

¶5. (C) We believe it is essential for the President to raise 
two issues in this initial meeting, Afghanistan and Iraq. On 
Afghanistan, France has been sending mixed signals. MFA 
Political Director Araud has counseled us to try early on to 
move Sarkozy away from Chirac's pessimistic view of 
Afghanistan, and lay the basis for a more activist, 
multifaceted French effort there. Unfortunately, in 
responding to the Taliban hostage-taking of a French NGO 
worker, Sarkozy suggested that a long-term French presence 
would not be "decisive," implying that he would consider 
reducing France's commitments. Although we have since been 
assured by Levitte that French policy has not changed, we 
believe it is essential to obtain that commitment from 
Sarkozy himself. NATO/ISAF requires France's continuing 
engagement; as with Bosnia or Kosovo, when it comes to the 
Alliance it must remain "in together and out together." 

¶6. (C) On Iraq, Sarkozy recognizes that an American defeat 
is also a defeat for Europe, and he told the President that 
he would "help get the U.S. out of Iraq." We take for 
granted that, at a minimum, this means that the needling 

PARIS 00001995 002 OF 002 


rhetoric of the past will be dropped, including repeated 
calls to offer a "horizon" for an eventual troop withdrawal. 
Beyond that, it is extremely unlikely that France would put 
troops on the ground, but the President should seek a new 
level of engagement that could be demonstrated, for example, 
by visibly working with Arab governments in support of a 
political settlement in Iraq. France could also raise the 
level of its representation at, and support for, the regional 
conferences with Iraq's neighbors now underway. 

¶7. (C) Sarkozy is likely to have two priority issues of his 
own to raise, climate change and Darfur. On the first, 
Sarkozy signaled during his election victory speech that 
climate change was his top priority, and he called on the 
U.S. to "take the lead" in the fight against global warming. 
Sarkozy has stopped short of calling on the U.S. to join 
Kyoto, but he publicly advocates the idea of a carbon tax on 
imports from non-Kyoto signatories as a means of defending 
Europe's CO2 emissions trading system (ETS). The President 
should express our interest in enhancing collaboration on 
climate change with France, with a view to greater 
cooperation on a positive science and technology agenda. 

¶8. (C) Darfur is likely to be a high-profile issue for 
Sarkozy and his Foreign Minister, former UN Kosovo Czar, NGO 
(Doctors Without Borders) activist, and human rights 
interventionist Bernard Kouchner, which would permit the 
Sarkozy government to put more of a human rights stamp on its 
foreign policy. (Sarkozy has himself called for greater 
human rights emphasis in French foreign policy: he has been 
sharply critical of Russia on Chechnya, and opposes the 
lifting of the EU arms embargo on China, on human rights 
grounds.) The President should assure Sarkozy of our desire 
to work closely with Sarkozy Darfur, with the aim of 
reproducing the kind of success we have had together on 
Lebanon. 

¶9. (C) As time permits, we would recommend that the 
President touch on the need to maintain continuity on 
U.S.-French cooperation on Lebanon/Syria and Iran, including 
the need to ratchet up sanctions and reinforce them outside 
the UN framework if necessary. The President should also 
stress the importance of maintaining Western unity on Kosovo 
in the face of Russian opposition. This might offer a chance 
for a brief exchange on Russia more generally, including on 
missile defense, and lead to a brief assessment by Sarkozy's 
assessment of EU-Russia relations. (Sarkozy has a much more 
critical view of Russia than did Chirac.) 

¶10. (C) Finally, Sarkozy's opposition to Turkish entry into 
the EU is public and likely unshakeable: it is one of his 
few defining foreign policy issues. He has heard our 
strategic rationale for bringing Turkey into the EU, but has 
made clear that whatever the ramifications of keeping Turkey 
out, he opposes bringing 70 million Muslims into Europe, 
further diluting its identity and exacerbating France's own 
sensitive immigration issue (although he puts his argument in 
terms of "Turkey is in Asia Minor, not Europe.") The 
President, while noting that this is an issue that only the 
EU can decide, should nonetheless seek to persuade Sarkozy to 
avoid any early or dramatic closing of the door; not taking a 
decision at this time would allow the accession negotiations 
so indispensable to Turkey's own internal reforms to proceed 
uninterrupted. 

Please visit Paris' Classified Website at: 
http://www.state.sgov.gov/p/eur/paris/index.c fm 

WHITE