A disinterested statesman speaks

In Hanoi for the first-day sessions of the fifth Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM) summit - the largest ever gathering of Asian and European leaders, from which Blair seems to be absent – Chirac has lost no time in pronouncing his support for the lifting of the 15-year-old arms embargo on China, claiming it is "totally senseless".

This, of course, is the same Chirac who opposed the Iraqi war, and neither his past stance on Iraq nor his current enthusiasm for China can possibly have anything to do with French commercial interests. In the case of China, this entirely disinterested statesman is merely expressing his concern that "the embargo shows lack of trust in China." And that would never do.