Leaders share their taste for power

Date: 28/11/1996

By Thomas Klau

RATHER surprisingly for a nation not renowned for its gastronomic skills, Germans are convinced that food is the best foundation for a loving relationship.

Liebe geht duhr den Magen (Love goes through the stomach) is one of the homely maxims German children are taught at their mother's knee.

No relationship better testifies to the truth of this saying than that between German Chancellor Helmut Kohl and French President Jacques Chirac. For whenever they meet in private, the two men like to sit down to a gargantuan meal of hearty regional food.

At their next meeting this Saturday (30 November) in the southern French city of Perigueux, Kohl and Chirac will be able to enjoy the renowned local cuisine while the chancellor's wife Hannelore receives a prize for the cookery book she published earlier this year.

The two men have had ample opportunity over the past few months to indulge their shared passion for fine food and wine.

Soon after their first meeting as chancellor and president in a traditional Alsatian eatery in the summer of 1995, and amid reports of tension in the Franco-German partnership, Kohl and Chirac decided to meet - and almost inevitably share a meal - at least once every six weeks.

The decision served its purpose, effectively quashing speculation that the Franco-German tandem would run less smoothly following the departure of former French President François Mitterrand.

Kohl had forged a genuinely emotional bond with the agile and sarcastic Mitterrand, and in a rare and much-noted display of public emotion, he was seen crying at the requiem in Paris' Notre Dame Cathedral after his old political colleague's death in August last year.

But speculation that Kohl's closeness to Mitterrand would inhibit the emergence of a personal rapport with Chirac has proved unfounded.

While Kohl's relationship with Mitterrand was based on genuine admiration for a French intellectual who combined an elegant use of language with vast literary knowledge and political wiliness, the chancellor moved swiftly to establish an easy relationship with Chirac.

Kohl is renowned in Bonn for conducting his foreign policy on a basis of Männerfreundschaften - literally 'men-friendships' - and is usually keen to forge close and trusting links with all important heads of state or government.

The most well-known bond is perhaps the one established between Kohl and Russian President Boris Yeltsin, which followed a similarly close relationship with the last Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachov.

Kohl's tendency to prefer direct personal ties over the inhibiting niceties of international diplomacy undoubtedly strikes a chord with Chirac.

In sharp contrast to his predecessor, the French president does not stand on ceremony. He is well-known for his vocal emotional outbursts, his penchant for back-slapping and his 'shirt-sleeves' approach to relationships with close collaborators.

And while an element of political calculation necessarily plays a part in such a relationship, collaborators say both Chirac and Kohl have enough in common to have established a rapport based on mutual trust.

This does not, however, exclude a divergence of views on a number of European policy issues.

Bonn is, for example, often impatient with Chirac's sometimes unpredictable forays into foreign policy matters such as the Middle East peace process, or his assertions about monetary and euro-related affairs, which usually prompt raised eyebrows in German financial circles.

But diplomats expect the full strength of Kohl and Chirac's relationship to come into play in the final stages of the Intergovernmental Conference on Union reform, when top-level haggling replaces careful diplomatic negotiations.