Versions differ over Malaysian comments : Did Chirac say what AFP heard?  
International Herald Tribune
July 24, 2003
John Vinocur 

CORRECTION PUBLISHED IN THE INTERNATIONAL HERALD TRIBUNE DATED

Friday, July 25, 2003:

An article Thursday misstated the day President Jacques Chirac met Prime Minister Mahathir bin Mohamad in Malaysia. It was Tuesday. The Elysée Palace press office put out an official text of what Chirac said the following day, Wednesday.

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When two virulent opponents of American involvement in Iraq like President Jacques Chirac and Prime Minister Mahathir bin Mohamad of Malaysia get together, the language of disapproval of U.S. policy normally gets a full workout. But this was a notch above standard.

Chirac, in Putrajaya on Monday to receive the Kuala Lumpur World Peace Award from Mahathir, said, according to Agence France-Presse, that the world could no longer submit to the law of the jungle and needed to create an international organization that could eliminate unilateralism.

For Chirac, what was required instead, according to the report in AFP's French-language service, "is an international structure, an international mechanism that can do away with unilateralism and bring multilateralism."

"We can no longer accept the law of the strongest, the law of the jungle," Chirac was quoted as saying.

The French news agency in turn attributed its version of Chirac's remarks to the official translator during award ceremonies in conjunction with Chirac's prize.

In the carefully measured vocabulary of official French criticism of the United States — not specifically mentioned by Chirac — the nonetheless clear juxtaposition of America with "law of the jungle" would be something new and evocative.

Coming at a moment of supposedly improving trans-Atlantic relations and attempts at the United Nations to fix a basis for wider international participation in pacifying Iraq, the report of the French president's jungle reference startled.

A reporter called the Élysée Palace press office to ask about it. He was told Monday evening that it was being checked.

On Tuesday, the press office put out what it said was a brief but unofficial text of what Chirac had said. It contained no reference to "the law of the jungle" but a torturous, seemingly fragmentary sentence that said, "We can no longer accept the evolution of men, the world, we can no longer accept the simple law of the strongest."

Left unspecified was what had actually been uttered in Putrajaya.

Either the president and his advisers thought better of the phrase, or the official translator quoted in the dispatch had added a little zest to Chirac's remarks in line with Malaysian policy, which has described the United States as anti-Muslim and against nonwhite peoples.

Not in dispute was Mahathir's saying the situation in Iraq would be difficult to resolve and would go through "a very difficult period."

"What has been done in the war in Iraq is wrong both during the war and after the war," Mahathir said.

"I totally share the opinion of the prime minister," Chirac responded. "We have had the same point of view, both before, during and after the war."

Chirac was honored, the AFP dispatch said, for his "resolute opposition to the war in Iraq and the courage he demonstrated in placing himself on the side of the oppressed."

The French president visited the French Pacific possession of New Caledonia on Tuesday. He is scheduled to travel to Tahiti.

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