THE travails of the coalition forces in Iraq were greeted with barely disguised satisfaction by many in France yesterday, as commentators concluded that Baghdad was already winning the battle for information in the war.

Amid public anger and disgust over the invasion of Iraq, French television and other reporters remain admirably objective in their reporting from the battlefields.

They are also devoting more time than the British or Americans to civilian casualties. The French networks, however, refused to broadcast video footage of the allied dead and of prisoners of war who were shown by the Iraqis, and yesterday the state broadcasting authority summoned the Paris manager of al-Jazeera to protest about the network’s transmission of the pictures.

However, a mood of “we told you so” is palpable in the spin and presentation of the “Anglo-Saxon” conflict, and the official allied version of events is treated with the same scepticism as that of Baghdad.

Bad news for the coalition is being tacitly seized upon as a vindication of the French stand against war.

“A black day for the Anglo-American forces,” the headlines said on yesterday’s main early television news bulletin recounting the allies’ losses and self-inflicted casualties.

Newspapers also played up the obstacles facing the coalition. “The failures of a lightning war,” the front page of Libération said. Much is being made of the absence of any visible welcome for the supposedly liberating army. After broadcasting President Saddam Hussein’s address yesterday, commentators on TF1, the biggest television network, emphasised the way in which Iraq was resisting invasion.

“The scenario of a regime as a clan that is cut off from its people is just not happening,” the TF1 analyst said. While the coalition is deemed certain to win, commentators are depicting the expected victory as pyrrhic, given the likely casualties.

France 2, the state television network, reported from London yesterday that “fear is now beginning to set in among a large part of the (British) people”. The main commentary on France-Inter’s equivalent of the BBC Today programme said that the allies had committed the serious error of underestimating their adversary.

“They have lost the information battle to the extent that the communiqués from Baghdad are often more credible than those of Washington,” it said. “More than that, they are in danger of defeat in the battle for opinion.” Le Figaro’s scornful editorial was headed: “Neither shock nor awe.”

Although some American and other pro-war opinion is being aired in the media, much of the overwhelmingly critical commentary is passing unchallenged. One analyst on France-Inter said yesterday, for example, that the Americans would undoubtedly invade other states in the region once Iraq had been dealt with.

The media tone is feeding and reflecting the extraordinary unity surrounding President Chirac against the US-led invasion. M Chirac has ordered his Government to avoid any public criticism of the allies and no politicians from his centre-right administration attended the big anti-war demonstrations at the weekend. They were dominated by the Left.

However, saturation coverage on television and radio is helping to drive a consensus among the usually fractious French that has no recent equivalent. The talk is of little else than the fighting and, as it is seen, the disastrous folly of “Bush’s war against Iraq”. Some of the beggars sitting in the sunshine on pavements in Paris yesterday held anti-war signs with their begging tins.

British, American and Australian residents are receiving commiseration over the policies of their governments. It is in stark contrast to the admiration that was widely voiced for “Anglo-Saxon” resolve during the Falklands conflict 20 years ago.

Solidarity in opposition to the war is acting as a rare spur to French unity. At football matches at the weekend, the alienated young fans of Arab descent did not indulge in their habit of jeering the national anthem. For the first time, M Chirac is being praised in the run-down immigrant housing estates.

A weekend newspaper poll found President Bush to be the most unpopular leader. He is disliked by 84 per cent of the French, and Tony Blair by 75 per cent. Gerhard Schröder, the German Chancellor, is admired by 71 per cent and President Putin of Russia by 47 per cent. Opinion was not sought on Saddam Hussein.

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