New York: Advocating that India should replace France as a permanent member of the UN Security Council, a senior columnist in a leading US newspaper on February 9 said that Paris was so caught up with its need to differentiate itself from Washington to feel important that it has become "silly".

India is the world's biggest Democracy, the world's biggest Hindu nation and the world's second largest Muslim nations and "quite frankly, India is just so much more serious these days", Thomas L Friedman wrote in 'The New York Times'.

India, he said, may be ambivalent about war in Iraq, but it comes to its ambivalence honestly. But France can't see how the world has changed since the end of the Cold War.

India can, he said.

Throughout the Cold War, Friedman said, France sought to differentiate itself by playing between the Soviet and American blocs. France could get away with this "entertaining little game" for two reasons - first, it knew that Uncle Sam, in the end, would always protect it from the Soviet bear. "So France could tweak America's beak, do business with Iraq and enjoy America's military protection."

And second, the Cold War world was a much more stable place, Friedman said.

Despite the world being divided between two nuclear superpowers, both were status quo powers in their own ways.

"They represented different orders, but they both represented order," he said.

Today's world is also divided, but it is increasingly divided between a "World of Order" anchored by America, the European Union (EU), Russia, India, China and Japan and joined by scores of smaller nations, and the "World of Disorder", said Friedman.

The "World of Disorder", is dominated by rogue regimes like Iraq's and North Korea's and various global terror networks stretching from the Middle East to Indonesia.

"Most of France's energy is devoted to holding America back from acting alone, not holding Saddam Hussein's feet to the fire to comply with the UN," he said.

"The inspections have not worked yet, says de Villepin (French Foreign Minister), because Saddam has not fully co-operated, and, therefore, we should triple the number of inspectors. But the inspections have failed not because of a shortage of inspectors. They have failed because of a shortage of compliance on Saddam's part, as the French know," wrote Friedman.

In a strong attack on the French position, he said de Villepin also suggested that Saddam's government pass "Legislation to prohibit the manufacture of weapons of mass destruction. That proposal alone is a reminder of why if America didn't exist and Europe had to rely on France, most Europeans today would be speaking either German or Russian".

If France were serious about its own position, he said, it would join US in setting a deadline for Iraq to comply.

"And France would send its Prime Minister to Iraq to tell that directly to Saddam. Oh, France's Prime Minister was on the road last week. He was out drumming up business for French companies in the world's biggest emerging computer society. He was in India," he said.

PTI