Chirac's stance against eastern candidates criticized as counter-productive

French President Jacques Chirac's bitter attack on Eastern Europe for backing the United States over Iraq has done more harm than good to France's hopes of building a sense of common purpose in an enlarged European Union. Chirac's tirade against the 13 states hoping to join the EU looked yesterday to have undermined rather than reinforced the European solidarity he said he wanted to boost, with the former Warsaw Pact states taking deep offense at his tone. Commentators said France had put EU referenda at risk and had made sure Paris would have more enemies when the EU expands in 2004. "In the new Europe, the common voice of Slovaks, Poles, Czechs and Hungarians will weigh more than France's. The Union after enlargement will change. It will be less French and German, less of Chirac. But not the worse for that," wrote the deputy editor in chief, Lubos Palata, in Slovakian daily Pravda. Wladyslaw Geremek, the former Foreign Minister, told Radio Zet, that "[Chirac's words] are also a projection of how large European countries like France imagine the co-existence of the weaker and the stronger - weaker economically, weaker demographically. Poland will never accept - and this should be clearly stated - any form of politics based on hegemony". (Gazeta Wyborcza, p.1; Reuters) A.C.