By Stephen Sackur BBC Europe correspondent

Chirac and Bush do not see eye to eye

Relations between Washington and London on the one side, and Paris on the other are strained; and Europe appears paralysed by its internal divisions.

Tony Blair speaks more than passable French but I suspect he has never heard of, let alone read, a tome entitled "Le Cri de la Gargouille", the Cry of the Gargoyle.

It sounds like one of those nerve-jangling blood soap thrillers favoured by airport bookshops doesn't it?

Well, terrifying it may be, but not by design, for Le Cri de la Gargouille is in fact an extended essay penned by France's flamboyant Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin, he of the carefully coiffed greying locks and chiselled features.

The message behind Mr de Villepin's literary excursion is fairly simple: France is a great country with a great responsibility, namely, to rediscover and exhibit to the world its own, well, greatness.

It is a familiar theme in a country still wedded to the grand ambitions of Charles de Gaulle and Tony Blair and George W Bush have in effect been forced to listen to the Cry of the Gargoyle adapted for the diplomatic stage.

Relations at risk

President Jacques Chirac is engaged in an extraordinary diplomatic gambit which has raised questions about the credibility and utility of international institutions from the United Nations to Nato and the European Union.

France is making a stand against what it calls the l'hyper pr�sence - the hyper-power.

The French know they cannot stop the American war machine rolling into Iraq over the next few days, but they can deny Messrs Bush and Blair the cover of a fresh UN resolution and that is precisely what they will do unless Washington and London are prepared to delay their assault on Saddam Hussein.

With German and Russian support France is likely to deny Tony Blair in particular the stamp of international legitimacy he so desperately craves.

This, of course, is much more than a row about Saddam's weapons of mass destruction or indeed the wisdom of overthrowing the tyrant of Baghdad.

To put it crudely, it is a battle about the way the world works, about the nature and extent of America's global domination.

France, with its Gaulle-ist juices flowing, has decided to risk its relationships with Washington and London in a bid to stem the tide of power and influence heading west across the Atlantic.

The French believe the time has come for Europe, a Europe led by, well, the French of course, to present an independent alternative, a counterweight to American power.

With ill-concealed satisfaction, French officials now point the domestic travails of Tony Blair and Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar.

French problems

"The European public is with us", goes the message, even if some of Europe's leaders are, how shall we say, infatuated with Washington.

The United States of America is busy making new best friends all over eastern Europe and there is a significant strategic payback

But France runs into problems when it makes grand claims to speak for Europe, problems which I experienced firsthand earlier in the week in a visit to Burgas, on the shores of the Black Sea in Bulgaria, about as far as you can get from the splendour of Mr Chirac's Elysees palace without falling off the edge of Europe.

Burgas is a monument to the awfulness of Soviet era planning.

Grimy tenements sag as if weighed down by decades of disappointment, antiquated factories belch and wheeze like old men on borrowed time and on the edge of town there is a dilapidated airport, the terminal building deserted except for a mangy cat.

But in the past two weeks, Burgas airport has become an unlikely outpost of American military power.

Half a dozen vast US air force refuelling tankers are now lined up on the tarmac, ready to provide a mid-air service to the bombers soon to be flying missions to Iraq.

Out on the runway, I came across a group of local dignitaries and journalists being showed around the planes by Colonel Jim Muscatel.

"Isn't this something?" the colonel enthused afterwards.

"The local governor here used to be a communist. Now he's my friend."

New European order

The United States of America is busy making new best friends all over eastern Europe and there is a significant strategic payback.

These former Communist nations see Washington as the guarantor of their security and freedom, which means France's ambitions for a leadership role in a muscular united Europe may yet be thwarted.

As Nato and the EU expand eastward, so the centre of gravity on the continent shifts away from Paris.

President Chirac can rail against this trend, though dismissing the East Europeans as infantile for supporting George Bush hardly helps his cause, but ultimately, he cannot reverse it.

Indeed, far from empowering Europe by standing up to Uncle Sam, the French have done much to expose a simple truth.

This continent lacks a common strategic vision and it is - for now - hopelessly divided.