Oil for Ethics

November 1, 2005
Wall Street Journal
Original Source: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB113079851222184579.html?mod=opinion&ojcontent=otep

The French press reported last week that the Quai d'Orsay wants to create an ethics committee for its diplomatic service. No, this is not some kind of satirical prank -- the story checked out -- but the latest French attempt at damage control over its involvement in the Oil for Food scandal.
So the country that gave the world the word for diplomacy now discovers ethics. Well, better late than never -- or is it? Certainly the foreign ministry does have a huge PR mess on its hands. A former French ambassador to the United Nations, a former secretary-general of the French foreign ministry, nine other high-ranking Frenchmen as well as a plethora of French companies stand accused of profiting from the U.N.'s corrupt program. While on Saddam Hussein's bribe-roll, many of these officials were outspokenly opposed to American-led efforts to depose him.
So, oui, it does seem like the Quai's finest might benefit from a refresher course on conflict of interest, for starters. But French Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy, writing in the daily Libération, didn't exactly sound contrite or self-critical. Grandiloquence remains the order of the day. If France preserves a pioneering role for the respect of cultural diversity, if its voice carries in the great conflicts of the world, if our country continues to draw attention and to cause curiosity and admiration, she owes this recognition largely to our diplomacy.
Only the French media, for a change, aren't swallowing the government's line that the Oil for Food scandal only implicated a few bad apples. It is at the very top of the state, where no one can have failed to be aware of these transgressions… and whose jealous servants these men were, that ultimate responsibility resides, Libération wrote last month. Le Monde went further: Even the most indulgent will wonder about the risks of a pro-Arab policy that was at times willfully blind.
The new ethics committee sounds like window dressing. Criticism from the country's press establishment that otherwise tends to reflexively defend French foreign policy -- now, that's real progress.