DESPITE a frosty Anglo-French climate, President Chirac and Tony Blair have a strong mutual interest in narrowing their gap over Iraq when they meet on Tuesday for the annual summit in the Channel resort of Le Touquet.

With a US-led onslaught on Iraq appearing imminent, the Prime Minister, fresh from meeting President Bush at Camp David, will be trying to win French support or at least acquiescence to a new UN resolution that would authorise force.

After taking France out on an anti-US limb in the company of Germany, M Chirac needs to limit the damage with Washington and ensure that Paris is not relegated to the sidelines in a conflict. The French leader is likely to explore ways of maintaining a UN and French role over an Iraqi conflict that does not involve losing French face.

There were signs yesterday that M Chirac’s Government may have overplayed its hand in its drive at the UN Security Council to marshal opposition to military action against Iraq. Officials acknowledged that Paris had been stung by the pro-American backlash in Europe, which manifested itself on Thursday in a joint declaration of loyalty to Washington signed by Mr Blair and seven other leaders.

The media of the Left and the Right portrayed the “gang of eight” yesterday as “new Europe” stooges who were serving a US strategy of dividing the Continent. Much was also made of the public hostility to an Iraq war across Europe. The first French doubts appeared, however, over the decision to line up with German pacifism. The pro-Chirac Le Figaro said that “Paris has probably just lost the prewar battle”.

It added: “The Bush- Blair axis has pulled off its intended coup. France has been causing irritation for months and now it is being isolated, in alliance with a neutral Germany.”

Libération, the main left-wing daily, said that M Chirac and Dominique de Villepin, the Foreign Minister, “have in a sense been asking for it”. The gang of eight had taken revenge on France for M de Villepin’s implied threat last Monday of a French veto in the United Nations.

M Chirac’s room for manoeuvre is limited, however. The Socialist-led opposition is waiting to pounce on any wobble in his anti-war line. Lionel Jospin, the former Prime Minister, made his first political statement yesterday since the night he was defeated in the presidential elections last April. France must have nothing to do with an Iraqi war, he said.

British and French officials emphasised the benefits of pulling together over Iraq. “It is being portrayed as if we want a war and the French do not, but it is not like that. We both want to disarm Iraq,” a senior British official said.

Iraq inevitably will dominate a summit that comes after weeks of friction between Paris and London as Britain has taken umbrage over the renewed Franco- German alliance. The French delayed the meeting from December after M Chirac and Mr Blair clashed at an EU council in Brussels the month before. Their dispute was over a Franco-German deal to delay reform of the expensive Common Agricultural Policy.

Since then, Berlin and Paris have sought to upstage Britain and its Spanish-Italian alliance by announcing joint positions on the future structure of Europe and, most damagingly, Iraq. Paris has also needled Britain this month by inviting President Mugabe of Zimbabwe to a summit of African leaders despite sanctions that prohibit him from travelling to the EU.

On the positive side, however, Britain has been gratified by France’s fulfilment of its pledge to close the Sangatte Red Cross centre near Calais and its efforts to stanch the flow of refugees across the Channel. The atmosphere has also been helped by Britain’s award this week to Thales, a mainly French company, of a big share of the contract to build two aircraft carriers.

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