Chirac: I Love the Us, Especially Its Junk Food

President Jacques Chirac, a man so partial to good grub that he once sent an Elysée palace sous-chef to Spain to learn how to make a decent oxtail soup, yesterday admitted that he had a soft spot for American junk food.

Savaged across the Atlantic for his opposition to the US march to war in Iraq, Mr Chirac said in an interview with Time magazine that he was more saddened than angry when he heard people say that his stance was inspired by anti-Americanism.

"I know the US perhaps better than most French people, and I really like the United States," he insisted, adding: "I've made many excellent friends there, I feel good there. I love junk food, and I always come home with a few extra pounds."

Mr Chirac has been a self-confessed fan of America since he spent a summer at Harvard in 1953, worked in a fast-food joint and enjoyed a passionate (if brief) love affair with a Carolina belle. He reminded the magazine that his personal involvement with the US went back a long time.

"I've studied there, worked as a forklift operator for Anheuser-Busch in St Louis and as a soda jerk at Howard Johnson's," Mr Chirac said.

But his affection for the US way of life did not stop him feeling concerned about its ambitions.

"Any community with only one dominant power is always a dangerous one and provokes reactions," he said. "That's why I favour a multipolar world."

It is a sad irony that Mr Chirac, who made improving transatlantic ties one of the main planks of his foreign policy, should now be presiding over the current crisis.