When President Jacques Chirac opened the seventh summit of Francophone nations in Hanoi yesterday, there was a certain confusion about just what la Francophonie means. The group, established by President Francois Mitterrand in 1986, was considered a tool for the propagation of the French language. But now Paris is aggressively trying to transform la Francophonie into the economic and political equivalent of the British Commonwealth - and some of its new members are not even French-speaking.
In his opening address to the leaders of 48 countries "who have a share in French", Mr Chirac said he was convinced that in the next century, "the great linguistic spaces will be distinct structures in the political scheme of things". He also promised 20 million French francs (£2.35 million) to fight English domination of the Internet and said he would encourage foreigners to study in France by giving more visas.
These measures were not enough to placate Mr Philippe de Saint-Robert and his group of French language purists. Still fuming over the Education Minister's remark in August that "English is no longer a foreign language", they demonstrated in front of the Academie Francaise in Paris yesterday.
France's ambitions for la Francophonie seem exaggerated when French is only the ninth language in the world, after Chinese, English, Hindi, Spanish, Russian, Arabic, Bengali and Portuguese.
Three-quarters of the world's 160 million French speakers are African, and the Africans created a behind-the-scenes crisis in Hanoi by opposing Paris's insistence that the former UN secretary general, Mr Boutros BoutrosGhali, who is Egyptian, be appointed to the newly-created job of Secretary General of la Francophonie.
The Africans thought the post should go to one of their own. Canada and Belgium also opposed his candidacy, because they fear it will diminish their own influence in the organisation.
In an interview with the French magazine Le Point this week, Mr Boutros-Ghali parroted French aspirations: "If la Francophonie limits itself to defending the French language, it has no future . . . To succeed, we must accentuate the political dimension of la Francophonie."
The Hanoi summit, which ends tomorrow, brings together a disparate group, many with dubious pretensions to speaking French. Israel and Nigeria, for example, do not spring to mind when one mentions the language of Moliere. But, like the French government, many of the summit's participants have ulterior motives. Israel - still a pariah among Arabs for its continuing occupation of Palestinian land - is eager to join any international organisation that will have it. Likewise, Nigeria has been shut out of the Commonwealth because of human rights abuses and seized the opportunity to snub Britain.
