Leaders and 'terrorists' speak with one voice

Dialogue, not war, was what they touted. But did the world care?

All of 55 nations were represented at the Francophonie conference in Beirut yesterday. The president of the mother country, Jacques Chirac, lectured them on international law and the sacred nature of the United Nations. President Emil Lahoud of Lebanon lambasted America's double standards – which must have had George Bush shaking in his Texan boots – while delegates were entertained by a Burkina Faso dance troupe.

Even President Abdulaziz Bouteflika turned up from Algeria, a country which has hitherto pointedly ignored the Francophonie conference out of residual anger at France's colonial rule. And there in the front row was none other than Sayed Hassan Nasrallah, leader of Hizbollah, a man whose organisation – the "A-team of terrorists", according to one of Colin Powell's underlings – probably makes Mr Bush shake a lot more than all the rest put together.

"I didn't know – thank you for telling me," said the luckless Canadian Prime Minister, Jean Chrétien, when journalists gleefully asked him what it was like to share a room with a "terrorist". "He was the guest of the government ... I did not meet him," Mr Chrétien went on. "I'm not looking for passports."

From Mr Chirac there came no comment, although it must have been instructive to have shared the room with a man whose militia – albeit under different leadership – is widely blamed for blowing up French military headquarters in Beirut in 1983, with the loss of 58 French paratroopers.

Boutros Boutros-Ghali, who managed to keep his "secretary-general" status as head of Francophonie after the Americans booted him out of the UN, got his own back by deploring Washington's biased policy in the Middle East.

Less inspiring was Mr Boutros-Ghali's attempt to define "francophonie". "We are talking," he said, "about cultural diversity, multilingualism, because as 'multi-partyism' is the basis of national democracy, multilingualism and multiculturalism are the basis of international democracy." And so, no doubt, say all of us.

What no one could explain was just how one becomes a member. What, for example, was Albania doing there? Or, for that matter, Moldavia? Did countries qualify if they spoke French? Or if they had been conquered by Napoleon? And how many of the 55 nations really spoke good French? There were some pretty dire speeches in that language.

But it's easy to be cruel. There was more goodwill at this meeting than there usually is at the UN. France works hard to maintain its dying language. Indeed, every French book sold in Beirut is subsidised by the French government. Which is why this is one of the few cities in the world where you can buy the entire works of Molière at half-price. Vive le Liban!