"Zorro" in duel of his life against most fearsome foe

13.03.2003
By CATHERINE FIELD, Herald correspondent

PARIS - French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin, the man who has moulded France's bold strategy of standing up to the United States over Iraq, is like a man from another age.

At a time when foreign ministers are usually tedious party loyalists memorable only for their blandness, de Villepin stands out as a kind of anachronism. He is a living fossil of times when politicians were Renaissance men - intellectual omnivores who also had fire in their bellies.

Even his appearance is anachronistic. Standing 1.9m, he is commandingly tall; athletically slim; unfailingly polite and charming but also passionate; silver-haired yet also silver-tongued and wolf-eyed.

Two centuries ago, he would have been a swordsman, a musketeer whose blade would have been as sharp as his wits, a man who would win ladies' hearts as easily he would make male enemies.

An old-fashioned word - "dashing" - somehow always comes to mind when de Villepin makes an appearance, and some diplomats, with a mixture of admiration but also envy, have taken to calling him "Zorro".

De Villepin's rapier skills have been on impressive display in the past few months as he carries out one of the boldest diplomatic strategies of recent times: to do nothing less than take on the world's hyperpower just as it is pumped up for a unilateral war and to tell it to work within the multilateral framework.

In a faceoff with US Secretary of State Colin Powell at the United Nations Security Council last month, de Villepin gave an electrifying performance, getting a loud round of applause for declaring "war is always the sanction of failure".

He skewered America's criticism of "old Europe", noting that opposition to the conflict came from "an old country that has known war, barbarity, oppression".

Powell is reported to have been stung to anger by de Villepin's show and the sardonic Frenchman has become a hate figure for some American media.

Press commentators have variously called him "oily", that he "lacks seriousness [and is] diplomacy-lite" and (this in the Wall Street Journal) "a positive monster of conceit, the abject procurer for Saddam the rat that tried to roar."

De Villepin never rises to the bait. He takes his time to explain - in excellent English that he honed in America - the reasons for France's insistence on diplomacy rather than war, and reiterates his country's enduring friendship for the US.

De Villepin only came to international prominence 10 months ago after the Socialist-led majority in Parliament was routed by President Jacques Chirac's conservatives. But he is well known at home, where for years he has worked as Chirac's right-hand man.

Right or wrong, he has been the architect of almost all of Chirac's decisions of importance over the past eight years. The failures include his advice, as secretary-general to the presidency, to dissolve Parliament in 1997, which led to a Socialist victory and five sterile years of power-sharing. And de Villepin has been recently criticised for sending French troops to intercede in the former West African colony of the Ivory Coast, where they are getting sucked into an increasingly bloody civil feud.

Such actions are typical of de Villepin, who believes fervently in the philosophy of willpower and the assertion of French influence.

De Villepin has a reputation for tirelessness. In the past 10 months, he has visited more than 70 countries.

After a day's work, he carries on with his intellectual pursuits. He is about to publish the second of a four-volume biography of his hero Napoleon (the first volume was given a rapturous reception by critics); he has authored several books about contemporary French culture; and he has also written two self-published collections of poetry. He collects African sculptures and antique books, and shares with Chirac a love of Chinese porcelain.

His aides are said to be exhausted by de Villepin, because he can get by on just 4 1/2 hours' sleep.

At weekends, he likes to go jogging, and can do a 10km haul without breaking a sweat. He has admitted that he has little time to spend with his wife and three teenage children.

Chirac's relationship with de Villepin has come under close scrutiny of late.

Despite de Villepin's occasional missteps and risk-laden strategy on Iraq, he is said to enjoy Chirac's total support. "He understands things at fantastic speed," Chirac has said of de Villepin. "It is very rare to meet a man like him who at the same time is a good poet and a very good commando leader."