CHIRAC, RISING FROM ELECTORAL BLUNDER, SEEKS TO LEAD AGAIN

PARIS---There was still a tinge of shock in Jacques Chirac's voice as the
French president recounted discovering in mid-May that President Bill
Clinton, Prime Minister Tony Blair and other leaders attending the Group of
Seven summit meeting did not intend to go to the United Nations for the
special session on the world's drug problems that begins Monday.

"This seemed unthinkable to me," recalled Mr. Chirac, who immediately began
lobbying the leaders of the world's richest countries and Russia to add a
trip to New York "as an act of faith" and compassion. "How could we have
this meeting be meaningful without the participation of the leaders of
major drug-consuming countries, which contribute so much to the problem?"
he asked.

U.S. and UN offlcials confirm that President Chirac's energetic and
emotional intervention at the Birmingham, England, summit meeting helped
get Mr. Clinton, Mr. Blair and others to rearrange their schedules to be
present at the special session on drugs in New York. Each head of
government or state will speak for seven minutes at the one-day conference.

"We cannot change the world in seven rninutes," Mr. Chirac remarked May 29
in an hour-long interview in his Elysee Palace office. "But we can show
that we will just not sit by and abandon the world' s desperate and
destitute."

Mr. Chirac's speech at the United J Nations and his initiative to get
others to aftend the meeting are big steps in his comeback from the
political roadside where he was left for dead a year ago after his call for
early elections led to his coalition's loss of National Assembly control.

Less than a month after he took on the rest of the European Union and
forced a compromise in the choice of a new head of the European Central
Bank, Mr. Chirac made clear in the interview that he is finding his voice
again and that he intends to claim a larger role for France on the global
scene.

This is likely to be a mixed blessing for Mr. Clinton, as hinted by the
troublesome changes Mr. Chirac inspired in the American president's
schedule for Monday.

Mr. Clinton's policies face increasing challenge from the French president,
who says he is acting in the name of global social justice and seeking to
ease the inevitable transition " to a multipolar world, equipped with a
wellfunctioning multilateral system."

Throughout the interview, Mr. Chirac laid strong emphasis on his personal
admiration for Mr. Clinton and on France's determination to cooperate with
American global leadership where possible.

But he did not hesitate to underline differences on sensitive topics like
Washington's extensive use of economic sanctions, the future of NATO and
the authority of the United Nations.

The one subject he would not discuss was the eerie similarity between
coverage by the U.S. press of the pursuit of Mr. Clinton by special
prosecutor Kenneth Starr and recent headlines here raising the possibility
of a criminal investigation implicating the French presidency in burgeoning
carnpaign finance scandals.

"I never discuss France's domestic politics with a foreign publication,"
Mr. Chirac said, indicating between the lines that he did not believe that
the separate controversies on opposite sides of the Atlantic had impaired
his or Mr. Clinton's abilities to govern. "Reason always wins out in the
end," he said as a general comment.

Foreign affairs have provided Mr. Chirac with a lifeboat in which to ride
out a political shipwreck that would have ended the career of a lesser
politician. Last June he called parliamentary elections a year early and
saw his conservative coalition lose its commanding majority to the
Socialists and Communists,- enabling Lionel Jospin to become prime minister
and form a government.

Under the French system Mr. Jospin, a Socialist who is to visit Washington
June 17-20, controls the country's domestic agenda, while Mr. Chirac, a
Gaullist, has a major say only in foreign policy and defense.

The two men are considered the most likely candidates for president when
Mr. Chirac's mandate expires in 2002, but they have worked to keep signs of
rivalry out of public view.

The public honeymoon may now be ending, as labor strife presents Mr. Jospin
with his first serious political challenges at home and as Mr. Chirac feels
comfortable in raising his profile on a number of issues, including
U.S.French relations.

His most pointed remarks concerned emerging differences between Washington
and Paris over the future mission of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization
which Mr. Chirac said France wili not permit to be turned into "a Western
alliance that would exercise military force anytime anywhere in the world.
That would be an immense danger for world peace."

Mr. Chirac discussed with Mr. Clinton over lunch at Birmingham the French
misgivings about the strategic concept the United States wants NATO to
adopt at its 50th anniversary sumnnit in Washington next spring.

Discussions of the strategic concept were formally launched at a NATO
foreign ministers gathering on May 28 in Luxembourg.

The administration and its supporters in the recently concluded U.S. Senate
debate on NATO enlargement have strongly indicated that they will Push for
a significant widening of NATO responsibilities and "power projection,"
including missions outside Europe.

"If NATO gives itself the right to intervene where it wants and when it
wants, other powers would immediately start doing the same thing, with as
much justification," Mr. Chirac said.

To pre-empt that, France will insist that NATO military operations outside
the alliance's European zone of selfdefense be approved by the UN Security
Council.

Checked-by: (Joel W. Johnson)