French diplomats and other Foreign Ministry personnel staged an unprecedented strike Monday to protest planned budget cuts, shutting down embassies and consulates around the globe and hindering services at home.  

From Madagascar to Rome, Washington and beyond, embassy personnel walked off the job for the one-day strike, according to the leading union at the ministry, known as UNSA-USMAE.

Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin, speaking on French radio, said half of diplomatic officials abroad were on strike. One-third of personnel in Paris took part, he said.

"Despite the strike, many of these officials -- even those who say they are striking -- continue to carry out their functions," he said on Europe-1 radio.

The walkout, however, clearly hurt the course of daily diplomacy.

Among foreign posts, the walkout closed down the French consulate in the Belgian city of Liege and hobbled embassies in Jakarta, Indonesia, and Rome. Officials at the Rome embassy said the ambassador and some staff remained on the job.

The unions reported 97 percent of staff at the Washington embassy walked off the job but a diplomatic source, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said 82 percent of the embassy staff observed the walkout.

The State Department says there are 57 people posted at the French Embassy in Washington, not including Ambassador Jean David Levitte. The ambassador was at work Monday, the source said.

France's Foreign Ministry oversees 9,409 employees -- more than 5,000 of them abroad, making it the second-largest diplomatic corps in the world after the United States.

Next year's proposed budget calls for 116 personnel cuts at the Foreign Ministry and a decrease in housing allowance for overseas posts, among other things. While the ministry's 2004 budget weighs in at an impressive US$5 billion -- a 2.6 percent increase from the 2003 budget -- much of the extra goes to development aid, meaning that the ministry itself would register a 1.26 percent decrease.

"After years and years of economizing that have hit this ministry ... they're asking us to go further -- that is to no longer have the means to do our job," Louis Dominici, head of a group of unions at the ministry, said on French television.

The strike coincided with a legislative debate Monday on the 2004 budget.

De Villepin had tried to use his well-honed diplomatic skills to sway the discontented.

This year was "a difficult year for our house," de Villepin told 600 employees last week. However, he expressed hope that the Quai d'Orsay, as the ministry is known, "will be recognized next year among the priority budgets."

"We must allow our diplomacy to give the best of itself," de Villepin said Thursday night, "and for that we need ... the means and the capacity to act."

De Villepin has led France's high-profile diplomacy focused on the U.S.-led war on Iraq, which Paris opposed, and its aftermath. However, some have pointed to his jet-setting diplomacy as too cost-heavy given the lean economic times.

Thierry Robert, a spokesman for the CGT, one of a half-dozen unions involved in the strike, said the walkout may seem surprising given the ministry's high profile in the world.

"One has the impression that, on the one hand, France's international ambitions are on the rise," he said on France-2 television, "and, on the other hand, one sees that the means are on the decline."

(China Daily December 2, 2003)