'We Are 25 Years Late'.(Iraq War)(Interview)

Remember the old days when France and the United States joined together in bold nation-building experiments? Before George W. Bush and Jacques Chirac began battling it out on the world stage, Bernard Kouchner, France's former minister of Health and a founder of Doctors Without Borders, played a leading role in one such exercise. His tenure as U.N. administrator in Kosovo was widely regarded as a successful operation in multilateral cooperation. In recent years the outspoken politician has emerged as one of the most popular figures on the French left. He recently spoke with Thomas Sancton, editor of a special French edition of NEWSWEEK, about the current situation in Iraq, the Bush administration and the state of Franco-American relations. Excerpts:

SANCTON: Do you support the French position on Iraq?

KOUCHNER: I did not support the French veto threat. I believe it was a mistake, and that the only possible way of triumphing over Saddam Hussein, a well-known murderer, would have been collective action. The latter is indispensable. Even if not everything is resolved in the Balkans, we won, and that victory is Europe's and America's. Had we done the same in Iraq, we would have won. Of course, not by following Mr. [Paul] Wolfowitz, Bush and Co., who were so convinced about being right on everything.

So you disagreed with their approach as well?

For 28 years now, I have been asking the international community to use what I call "the right of intervention" to get rid of Saddam. Couldn't we have waited a bit longer, what was the rush? What madness! George W. Bush really sees the world in black and white. Human rights are foreign to him, and he gives the impression he doesn't even know where countries lie on the map, and then patronizes about good and evil. No doubt Saddam Hussein was evil. But Bush, unfortunately, is not the incarnation of good. Yet one must be careful not to judge too quickly. A peace mission cannot be assessed in six months. Even a failed mission, if I may say so. After six months in Kosovo, I was still dealing with 40 assassinations per week. Today there's only one or two. A peacekeeping mission takes years.

You support the right of intervention. Isn't that what the United States did in Iraq?

In the present case, we are 25 years late in acting against Saddam Hussein. Furthermore, the right of intervention must lie with the international community. If the international community refuses to ...