UNFORTUNATELY, SHE'S NO KERRY:

Ségolène postpones US tour after Hillary snub (Henry Samuel, 18/12/2006, Daily Telegraph)

Ségolène Royal, the French Socialist presidential candidate, postponed a "triumphant" US tour planned for this week after Hillary Clinton declined to meet her, it was claimed yesterday. [...]

An unnamed advisor to Mrs Clinton told the newspaper Le Parisien that appearing next to a French Socialist who recently met an official of the Hizbollah movement in Lebanon could be construed as condoning the beliefs of the militant Shia group. The Democrats also have little in common with French Socialism, which supports massive state intervention, a huge civil service, and regularly lambasts "US world hegemony".

But the main problem, said the advisor, stemmed from Miss Royal's association with the Hizbollah official, who denounced the "unlimited dementia of the American administration" and likened Israel's foreign policy to "Nazism".

Ms Clinton gets that there's nothing for her in being linked to France.

Posted by Orrin Judd at December 17, 2006 11:25 PM