Leaders agree on everything (except for the troublesome key issues)

President Jacques Chirac of France and Tony Blair met in a building that houses a casino yesterday.

Both know that they face a huge gamble in the next few weeks over whether to support a US-led war in Iraq. Both decided that yesterday was a day for hedging their bets.

The quarrel that marred their last lengthy meeting in Brussels in November was ostentatiously forgotten at the Anglo-French summit in Le Touquet on the Channel coast. Both leaders decided to put the emphasis on the many warm and constructive things happening across the water between Britain and France.

There is, they said, to be an unprecedented new language-teaching and twinning agreement between British and French schools.

Yes, very good, but what should the world do about Iraq? (Britain has been pushing for a UN Security Council resolution to authorise war; France has been threatening to use its veto to block military action.)

The two leaders said they agreed on Iraq. They had agreed to disagree, for now. In effect, they put all their chips on the next square of the board. They suggested that all hope of avoiding a serious transatlantic, and European, rift over Iraq should ride on a report of the chief UN weapons inspector, Hans Blix, on 14 February. M. Chirac was clearly hoping that the report would call for an extension of inspections and undermine the US-British case for war. Mr Blair was presumably hoping that the report would say that inspections could do no more.

What should the world do about Zimbabwe? (France has invited President Robert Mugabe to a France-Africa summit in Paris this month.) The two men made it clear they preferred not to talk about that.

The meeting in Le Touquet – also attended by five cabinet ministers on each side – was a clear display of the fact that Britain and France could agree (on all but the most important questions of the day). M. Chirac and Mr Blair appeared relaxed together at the end-of-summit press conference. The other ministers embraced each other in front of the cameras.

President Chirac gave a long peroration on the many historical forces which "yoke" Britain and France together. Mr Blair said, in French: "There are many more things which unite us than divide us."

Why such a show of affection, despite the obvious differences? Partly, there is genuinely a flourishing British- French relationship in dull, practical areas. Apart from the education agreement, the ministers signed new accords on European defence policy, immigration and (somewhat ironically) co-operation in Africa.

But M. Chirac and Mr Blair have other, more pressing reasons not to fall out in public. Each needs the other. Mr Blair's exposed position, backing America's aggressive policy in Iraq against British public opinion, would be greatly lessened if France could be persuaded to back the US-British line. M. Chirac made it clear yesterday that he believes war is "always the worst of solutions" and that de-fanging of Saddam could still be accomplished by the UN inspections.

But French officials admit that he knows obstructing a UN resolution would be double-edged. It would make M. Chirac a hero to many but ruin Franco-American relations and marginalise the UN Security Council, where France is an important player.

M. Chirac said that it was "for the inspectors to tell us" whether it was no longer possible to disarm Saddam by peaceful means. Senior British officials said there had been a significant shift in French tone but, as yet, no shift in the French position. "Chirac needs someone to play a new card, if he is going to change the game," one official said. "That card cannot be played by the US. It could be played by Hans Blix on 14 February."

Several attempts were made to persuade M. Chirac to state the French position more clearly at the joint press conference. "Is this a game?" he said. "Perhaps you think I don't understand anything. Perhaps you think that by asking the same question in different ways, it will finally enter my brain?" M. Chirac knew his position was ambiguous, and deliberately so. This, in itself, is a shift from the more strident anti-war position of France in the past two weeks. But it is equally clear that M. Chirac still sees no rational case for war.