From France with Much Love

Fom France with Much Love

From the moment he alighted in the U.S. last week, France's President Valery Giscard d'Estaing put his--and his country's--best foot forward.

To emphasize the high quality of French technology, he arrived for his six-day Bicentennial visit aboard a sleekly beautiful Concorde SST that had flown from Paris in a mere three hours and 37 minutes (only two days afterward, the Federal Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ruled that the supersonic jet could begin commercial service to Dulles International Airport this week on a 16-month trial basis). His lissomely beautiful wife Anne-Aymone was a movable feast of French high fashion, showing off no fewer than 14 Diors, Chanels, Courreges and the like during their brief stay.

Heavy Accent. As for Giscard himself, he responded to President Ford's welcoming remarks with a friendly gesture that would have dismayed one of his predecessors, Charles de Gaulle, who maintained a haughtily arrogant mien throughout his eight-day visit to the U.S. in 1960. Turning to Ford, Giscard said, "Now, Mr. President, permit me to be my own interpreter," and he proceeded to give his nation's greetings entirely in English. When he spoke of both countries' "identical passion for independence and liberty," it was with a heavy accent. But President Giscard had gone to the trouble of taking English lessons for two years--sometimes by listening to the BBC.

At a White House dinner in his honor that night, Giscard sounded the refrain of unalloyed pro-Americanism by saying: "France is a dependable friend." The next day, in a 34-minute speech before a joint session of Congress (also delivered in English), he promised that France "will continue to contribute to the effectiveness of the Atlantic Alliance of which she is a part." Later, in a tent lined with the same red cloth as a Versailles salon, he entertained the Fords at a dinner on the grounds of the French embassy.

All told, Giscard met for some three hours with President Gerald Ford and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. TIME Correspondent Gregory Wierzynski, who accompanied the French President from Paris and throughout his American visit, reports that the tone of the meetings was exceptionally friendly. The once frayed relations between the two countries have in fact improved remarkably since the friendly encounter between Ford and Giscard in Martinique at the end of 1974. The U.S. has relaxed its pressure on France to rejoin NATO, while France has quietly resumed its participation in NATO planning. The U.S. no longer criticizes Paris for its independent ways and instead tries to capitalize on France's potentially useful role as middleman to Communist and Third World countries.

For their part, the French have dropped their insistence that the U.S. return to the gold standard. The only hitch in the informal talks was the U.S. objection to France's sale of a nuclear processing plant to Pakistan. Washington fears that Pakistan will soon become a nuclear power. Giscard firmly pointed out that France had already canceled the sale of a uranium reprocessing plant to South Korea. He also assured Ford that in the Pakistan sale, he had taken "all the precautions" called for by the 1968 nonproliferation treaty (which the French have never signed).

Giscard's entire trip was a calculated exercise in Gallic persuasion to improve the French image in the U.S. A poll conducted in February by Louis Harris for the French government had shown him that there was a great deal of room for improvement. Only 25% of the average Americans who were questioned considered France a leader among middle-sized powers; only 34% thought that France had played an important role in the Revolutionary War*; most unkind, only 35% regarded France as a U.S. ally.

Beef and Beans. Among the French, America's image was hardly better. A poll published last week in the newsmagazine Le Point showed that only 33% of the French people believed that the U.S. had the capacity to "deal reasonably with current world problems"; only 29% felt America provided a good example of democracy.

Avoiding possible trouble spots like New York, where pro-Israeli demonstrations were feared. Giscard journeyed to Houston, where he ate roast beef and red beans in a candy-striped tent with 350 Texas oil and cattle millionaires, then he moved on to New Orleans, Philadelphia and Yorktown, delivering 17 speeches and toasts along the way. It was a nearly flawless performance, marred only by his country's gift to the U.S.: a sound and light show at Mount Vernon that embarrassed viewers found syrupy, unfocused and superficial in its history.

* Ironically, one of Giscard's own ancestors, Vice Admiral Jean Baptiste Charles Henri Hector d'Estaing, in 1778 led the first French fleet to aid America's fight for independence.

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