Story is from the Telegraph, but they dropped the link, so I picked the story up from the SMH....
3//The Sydney Morning Herald November 14, 2003
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/11/13/1068674318387.html FRENCH-GERMAN ALLIANCE WARMS AMID US COLD WAR
By Philip Delves Broughton in Paris
France is threatening to unite with Germany to maintain their influence in an enlarged European Union and strengthen their common front against the United States, according to reports yesterday.
Foreign minister Dominique de Villepin was quoted by Le Monde speaking explicitly about "Franco-German union" and to have called the further deepening of ties between the countries "the one historic challenge we cannot lose".
Le Monde gave most of its first three pages to reports on the proposed union, noting that it was an idea whose time might have come.
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