WHITE HOUSE WARNS FRANCE OVER ARMS DEAL

Just when it seemed France and the United States were repairing soured relations that had their origins in France’s opposition to the Iraq war, there have been sharp exchanges between the White House and the Elysee Palace.
The US is angry that an arms deal involving two French companies could lead to China’s air force acquiring a military edge over its counterpart in Taiwan. As far as Washington is concerned, the deal is also a breach of the EU embargo on sales of military hardware to the Chinese. Strangely enough, the arms deal is not with China though it would be a potential beneficiary. It is with Pakistan, which is involved with China in a joint project to build the JF-17, a multi-operational fighter on order for the Chinese military. Pakistan approached the French companies to purchase the most advanced radar and air-to-air missiles for the fighter and got the go ahead from the French government. Pakistan assured the French that its role in the project was to handle the avionics, including the radar and missile while the Chinese concentrated on hardware. After a contract was signed, no mention of it was made to Washington which keeps a watching brief on all things connected with China’s weapons procurement. However, when details of the deal were leaked by someone in Pakistan, the Pentagon immediately contacted President Bush and he had harsh words with his French counterpart, Nicholas Sarkozy.
President Bush is to said to have pointed out that Taiwan was already using French built Mirage fighters with the same kind of radar and missiles the French were about to sell off to Pakistan. If China were to get its hands on the source codes used to integrate the radar and missiles into the fighter jet, the Chinese military could incorporate those codes into its J-10 fighters, thereby giving them an edge over Taiwan’s Mirage fighters.
After that exchange, the French Defense Minister, Herve Morin told journalists he knew of no arms deal with Pakistan, and the two French companies at the heart of the issue refused to answer questions about it. European defense experts had harsh words for the French. Andrew Neill, a British military specialist on Asia predicted a severe rebuke for the French from the Bush administration. Like others, Neill saw the episode as yet another devious attempt by China to exploit what appeared to be a regular arms deal with Pakistan in order to find a way the EU and US embargos on sales of hi-tech military equipment to China’s Peoples’ Liberation Army. Other experts pointed to the fact that it was not only the US and Taiwan that would be justified in demanding that the French jettison the deal but also India, which has as much justification as Taiwan for seeing that its neighbor, China, does not suddenly acquire a military advantage in the skies.
The actions of the French highlighted a recurring fault line in France’s relationship with the United States. On the one hand, the new French President, Nicholas Sarkozy, appears to be everything his predecessor, Jacques Chirac was not but in others ways he is a traditionalist. For example, he supports Washington’s tougher line against Iran yet gives his backing to a French foreign policy that seeks in some ways to detach Europe from the US, especially in terms of the EU’s relationship with countries like China. France has been particularly vocal within the EU in arguing that the US should not be allowed to determine how Europe interacts with China, which offers a large market to EU products. The French defense industry has also lobbied hard for a lifting of the EU embargo, arguing that France is missing out on billions of dollars and that sooner or later China is going to acquire the hi-tech military equipment it needs through third parties, especially the Russian defense industry. That view has not convinced everyone in France that the embargo is counterproductive. Several leading commentators have argued that the more hi-tech materials China acquires, even in the field of civilian aircraft design, the quicker China will develop an edge over its competitors, including EU nations like France.
From a US perspective, White House intervention may have forced a re-think by the French but even if that is the case it will not be known for months. In the meantime, the episode raises another danger, namely how much the developing strategic relationship between China and Pakistan - as well as joint military projects the two nations have undertaken - will compromise US security and undermine its efforts to prevent China acquiring certain types of hi-tech military software and hardware.