{"id":284,"date":"2004-10-26T00:01:23","date_gmt":"2004-10-26T05:01:23","guid":{"rendered":"\/?p=284"},"modified":"2004-10-26T00:01:58","modified_gmt":"2004-10-26T05:01:58","slug":"france-accepts-iraqi-conference-rules","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/targetcentermass.net\/?p=284","title":{"rendered":"France Accepts Iraqi Conference Rules"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I <a href=\"http:\/\/targetcentermass.com\/index.php?p=218\">posted<\/a> last month on France&#8217;s requirements for their participation in an international conference on Iraq.  I openly ridiculed their demands for inclusion of representatives of the terrorists at the table and a placement of U.S. withdrawal on the conference agenda.  Well, now it seems the <a href=\"http:\/\/story.news.yahoo.com\/news?tmpl=story&#038;cid=540&#038;ncid=736&#038;e=1&#038;u=\/ap\/20041026\/ap_on_re_mi_ea\/france_iraq\">French have caved<\/a> on one of their firm stances.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>In a quiet retreat, France on Monday eased off its call to include Iraqi groups that renounce violence in an international conference next month on ways to pacify their war-ravaged country.<\/p>\n<p>Foreign Minister Michel Barnier acknowledged that the governments-only meeting in the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheik from Nov. 22-23 would not be open to other factions outside Iraq&#8217;s interim leadership.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s an intergovernmental conference. I&#8217;m willing to recognize that only governments will participate,&#8221; Barnier told reporters after an informal meeting with European and North African counterparts. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>There is no mention in the article of France&#8217;s other demand for discussion of an American withdrawal.  To their credit, France&#8217;s &#8220;quiet retreat&#8221; is an improvement over their seeming tendency to run away screaming.  Maybe there&#8217;s a shred of hope for them yet.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I posted last month on France&#8217;s requirements for their participation in an international conference on Iraq. I openly ridiculed their demands for inclusion of representatives of the terrorists at the table and a placement of U.S. withdrawal on the conference agenda. Well, now it seems the French have caved on one of their firm stances. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,1,6,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-284","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-europe","category-general","category-middle-east","category-war-on-terror"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/targetcentermass.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/targetcentermass.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/targetcentermass.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/targetcentermass.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/targetcentermass.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=284"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/targetcentermass.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/targetcentermass.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=284"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/targetcentermass.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=284"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/targetcentermass.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=284"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}