French presidential candidate Segolene Royal traveled to the Middle East hoping to show that she can shine on the international stage as brightly as she has done at home.
Seeing a chance to add heavyweight diplomatic credentials to her bid for the presidency, she waded into the intricacies of the Middle East crisis with gusto. But she appeared to trip up in Lebanon, then took a tough, controversial position on Iran's nuclear program that flies in the face of an international treaty.
In Israel on Monday, the Socialist candidate said she would press the international community to ban Iran's access to nuclear power entirely if she is elected next spring. Her position goes far beyond the French stance of pressing for a halt to uranium enrichment there, and it even contradicts the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which says a peaceful nuclear program is acceptable.
Royal said Iran was not to be trusted, and that a civilian nuclear program there would permit a military one.
"All those who think the contrary show their naivete, and I'm not naive," she told reporters.
Similar comments on Iran in the past have led critics to pounce on her, saying she needed to brush up on her knowledge of international treaties.
In Lebanon, Royal failed to immediately react when a Hezbollah lawmaker with whom she met on Friday compared Israel's former occupation of Lebanon to that of the Nazis in France during World War II.
The next day, as criticism of her mounted, Royal insisted that she simply had not heard the remark, made in Arabic and translated for French reporters covering her trip. Royal, who had a different translator, said she would have left the meeting in protest if she had heard.
But by then the damage was seemingly done. Back in France, her political rivals have seized on the incident as evidence that the Socialist candidate who has no experience of top government posts is a diplomatic lightweight, even a liability.
Sarkozy's party said Royal's five-day trip was "poorly prepared," and "useless for peace" and dangerous.
Defense Minister Michele Alliot-Marie suggested that Royal may have endangered French lives in Lebanon, where France has 1,500 troops in the UN peacekeeping force monitoring the ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah.
Sarkozy himself, who is taking care not to appear ungentlemanly against a woman candidate, was more measured, noting that the Middle East is "extremely complicated."
Royal will nonetheless return from the Middle East with photos of herself shaking hands with Israeli, Lebanese and Palestinian leaders -- images that could stay in voters' minds long after the criticism has died down.
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