If elected as France's next president, Nicolas Sarkozy will work with U.S. President George W. Bush but will not follow him blindly, one of the French front-runner's advisers on international affairs said Wednesday, according to AP. «A lot is going to depend on the ability of the United States to listen, and stop this unilateralism that has been quite counterproductive,» Pierre Lellouche, a lawmaker from Sarkozy's conservative party, said in an interview. «We will take the hand that the United States extends toward Nicolas Sarkozy ... on the condition that it is ready for real dialogue, and not only to hurl decisions that we are asked to follow _ because it won't work like that.» French-U.S. ties hit a low under outgoing President Jacques Chirac after he led international opposition to the Iraq war. Sarkozy has said he, too, would have kept France out of Iraq. But he is far more pro-American that his challenger, Socialist Segolene Royal, who would become the first woman president of France if elected May 6. Sarkozy met Bush in Washington last September, and with Senators Barack Obama and John McCain, both in the race to replace Bush in 2008. «If Nicolas is elected, he will have Bush before him for another 1-½ years, so it'll be necessary to work with the president elected by the American people,» said Lellouche, before adding: «Bush isn't America.» «Sarkozy won't lie down, he's a man who's free in his mind and will defend France's national interest,» he said. Sarkozy has not said who his foreign minister will be if he's elected. Lellouche, who accompanied Sarkozy on the trip to the United States, is a possibility. Other defense and diplomacy experts on Sarkozy's team are Defense Minister Michele Alliot-Marie, European Affairs Minister Catherine Colonna, former Prime Minister Alain Juppe and former Foreign Minister Michel Barnier _ all veterans of the Chirac era. In an interview with Le Monde daily published Wednesday, Sarkozy promised «surprises» in his eventual Cabinet, clearly in line with his campaign-trail pledge to break with Chirac's policies and style. Sarkozy has repeatedly taken policy ideas from the United States. As interior minister, he led a «zero tolerance» policy on crime like one by former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani in the 1990s. He favors term limits in France and a French equivalent of the annual State of the Union address to Congress. He hails the American dream of economic opportunity and America's relatively harsher punishment for crimes _ at least compared with that of France. He favors a French-style form of affirmative action to hoist marginalized blacks and Arabs into mainstream society, and supports U.S.-style programs to foster small business development. He recently touted the «French dream» and quoted Martin Luther King. Sarkozy would likely line up with the United States in an array of areas. Generally seen as more pro-Israel than Chirac, he supports Israel's security and favors Palestinian statehood. But Sarkozy opposes Bush's support of Turkey's effort to join the European Union _ in which France is a founding member _ and would likely be cautious about addressing the Iraq war and its fallout. With polls showing that the French are most worried about jobs and the economy, foreign affairs have gotten a short shrift in this year's campaign. But under France's constitution, the president's main jobs are foreign and defense policy.
