French President Nicolas Sarkozy says he will decide by late 2008 or early 2009 whether France will fully rejoin the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). It is one of the more important issues left unresolved at the recently concluded Bucharest Summit, where Sarkozy proclaimed: "I reaffirm here France's determination to pursue the process of renovating its relations with NATO." Gen. Charles de Gaulle withdrew France from NATO's military structure in 1966 in protest over American dominance of the Atlantic Alliance. And more than 40 years later, the issue of American influence over European security remains a fundamental stumbling block to improved Franco-U.S. relations. But France has been toying with the idea of rejoining NATO for more than a decade. Indeed, in 1995, Sarkozy's predecessor, the neo-Gaullist Jacques Chirac, told U.S. President Bill Clinton of his desire to bring France back into the alliance command structure. But the effort was abandoned when the Clinton Administration rejected French conditions for full reintegration, and when Chirac lost his governing majority in snap parliamentary elections in 1997.
France Wants to Join NATO to Ease the Way for European Defense
