PARIS, Sept. 23 (UPI) -- It's not likely to make President George W. Bush's reading list anytime soon, but a new book out in France recalls -- for those who may have forgotten -- that transatlantic disagreements are alive and kicking.
Titled "The Shark and the Sea Gull," the book is authored by none other than France's flamboyant, silver-haired former foreign minister, Dominique de Villepin -- who drew international attention, and sometimes plain outrage, as the passionate spokesman for the French-led anti-Iraq war coalition.
Today, de Villepin is charged with a far less romantic, law-and-order portfolio as the country's Interior Minister.
But his latest tome -- touching on the U.S.-led conflict and its messy aftermath, the Israeli-Palestinian impasse, the role of France and Europe in world affairs, and of course the United States -- once again recalls de Villepin's glory days as France's globe-trotting envoy, and it burnishes his political portfolio at home.
Indeed, the book could not have come out in a better month, as clashing world views resurfaced at the United Nations general assembly meetings in New York.
De Villepin's boss, French President Jacques Chirac, offered one end of the foreign policy argument as he accused Washington of impeding the global fight against poverty.
Bush offered the other, as he defended his Iraq policies in a Tuesday speech at the United Nations that was sharply criticized in the French press.
The two leaders did not meet. And Chirac told reporters that France's stance on Iraq -- notably against sending troops to Baghdad and in favor of U.N.-led force for the country -- had not changed.
Iraq also figures prominently in de Villepin's book, as he rehashes the reasons for France's antiwar stance. So do the Israeli-Palestinian clashes, globalization, terrorism, and why France and Europe must play a special role in world affairs.
Peppered with historical references and soaring prose, the 260-page "The Shark and the Sea Gull" borrows its title from a 1946 French poem by Rene Char. The shark embodies strength, the seagull grace and flexibility in a complex, multilateral world.
The underlying message is how to build understanding and tolerance among starkly different nations -- even sharks and seagulls coexist in nature.
But it's not hard to figure our which country is the shark, and which is the sea gull.
A handful of book reviews to date note that while Villepin is long on style, his book is short on the specifics of how to go about building his ideal world order.
"Seagull philosophy," was how Britain's The Independent summed up the book.
"Mr. de Villepin offers little practical advice," the newspaper wrote, "on how Osama bin Laden, Donald Rumsfeld and Vladimir Putin -- to name but three -- can be encouraged to embrace the contours of diversity together."
Of de Villepin's description of the United States as being driven by a "messianic imperialism," France's Liberation newspaper said: "One can accept that analysis, or judge it ridiculous, but one would like the minister to explain concretely what is his version of a multi-polar world."
De Villepin has few chances to do so in his new post as France's Interior Minister.
His once-shoulder length hair, which seemed to fit the charismatic foreign envoy job, is now cut short.
And while he remains a prominent fixture in television talk shows and newspaper interviews -- and Chirac's rumored favorite successor -- de Villepin is no rival to France's hard-driving Economy Minister, Nicolas Sarkozy.
At the Interior Ministry, de Villepin is largely following an agenda set out by Sarkozy, who headed the organization until a few months ago.
He was rumored as a replacement for France's unpopular prime minister, Jean Pierre Raffarin, and a candidate to head Chirac's ruling Union for a Popular Movement party.
But Raffarin is staying put for the moment, and de Villepin never bid for the top UMP post.
Instead Sarkozy, one of France's most popular politicians, is likely to win the party presidency handily in upcoming elections.
"It's true he's been less activist, less visible" since de Villepin was foreign minister, said Francois Haegel, a political analyst at the Institute for Political Studies, in Paris. "In part, he may not want to be in rivalry with Sarkozy, since Sarkozy is so strong."
But 50-year-old de Villepin, a towering man with boundless energy, has never been a household name in France. He forged his career as a political insider, first as French ambassador to the United States, and later as Chirac's top adviser.
He has never run for elected office, or cultivated any real following within the ranks of his conservative party.
Until Iraq and his antiwar diatribes, few French knew much about their foreign minister. Today, he's ranked second in popularity among Chirac's ministers -- but well behind Sarkozy.
Today, many analysts speculate de Villepin's new Interior Ministry job may buff his credentials for a possible presidential bid in the future.
"For a long time, French people saw de Villepin as a man in the shadows, a man whose been in the corridors of power," Haegel said. "This will show him off as a national figure."
So far, however, the two areas in which Villepin has shone in recent weeks -- defending France's controversial head scarf ban, and offering words of hope about a speedy release of two French hostages in Iraq -- are those with a foreign policy angle.
The latter was a misstep, Le Monde newspaper noted, since Islamist have yet to free the hostages.
De Villepin's swift and very public condemnation of an apparent anti-Semitic attack in July -- which later proved to be a fabrication -- was another mistake.
"The police beat is not one that lends itself easily to lyrical flights and geopolitical metaphors," Le Monde noted in an analysis this week of de Villepin's performance as France's top cop.
Being a good Interior Minister, the newspaper wrote, "requires a mix of authority, proximity and pragmatism" -- which France's poet-politician, it added, has yet to develop.
