In the United Nations' Security Council debate over the resolution on Iraq, many were surprised to see France re-emerge as a key player.

According to reports President George W Bush was for the first time in months regularly calling President Jacque Chirac on the telephone. Now that the Security Council has agreed to impose tough weapons inspections on Iraq, France is claiming to have secured an important concession. Meanwhile, British sources are ridiculing the minimal change in words in the final resolution. While visiting London, U.S. Pentagon advisor Richard Perle told the Guardian newspaper that, from France, "I have seen diplomatic manoeuvre, but not moral fibre".

The return of French diplomacy is something of a surprise -- not least for the British foreign office -- smarting at the recent isolation of London at the European summit. Though a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council and a nuclear power, France's status had dwindled in recent years.

America's support for rebel forces in Rwanda and Zaire in the 1990s reduced French influence in Africa. In 1995 France's nuclear tests in the Pacific upset U.S. attempts to enforce the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. In 1996 France's nomination for the post of UN Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali was denied a second term in 1996, after Britain and the U.S.A ganged up to nominate their "own African" Kofi Annan, at a time when French-U.S. antagonism was said to be at its peak.

Behind this succession of international incidents stood France's diminished status in the emerging world order. France's chosen role for many years was as the diplomatic and military wing of the Franco-German alliance. While Germany was the European Union's economic locomotive, that country's troubled history limited its capacity to challenge the American order in the realm of diplomacy. But the Franco-German alliance was called into question by German reunification and the consensus-building international diplomacy of the Clinton Presidency in the 1990s.

With America more willing to deal directly with a reunified Germany, France's special position seemed to be over. Instead, Britain, having lost its Empire, at last appeared to have discovered a role. As the Clinton team sought to build international alliances, Britain under prime minister Tony Blair emerged as an intermediary between Europe - and specifically Germany - and America.

By driving the pace of humanitarian intervention in third world trouble spots, Britain was once again "punching above its weight" in the international ring, while France was looking like a non-contender. Lionel Jospin's foreign minister Hubert Vedrine did attempt to enhance France's reputation as a diplomatic innovator, but remained under Britain's shadow as Tony Blair stole a French proposal from the 1950s for a European Defence Force.

The changing mood of U.S. diplomacy following the election of Republican George W Bush, however, disturbed the pattern of international relations that had been established by President Bill Clinton and Tony Blair. Convinced that the previous administration had given too much away to the "international community" (read European diplomacy), the Bush administration tore up one treaty after the next in an effort to re-model the world order with its own status as sole superpower at the core.

In the renewed conflict with Iraq, Bush threatened that the United Nations (UN) could find itself irrelevant if it failed to endorse the U.S. war drive. In the event Bush's bluster was more negotiating strategy than isolationism, but it did put the European powers to the test - and that test proved as favourable to France as it proved awkward for Britain.

Everything is in the timing in international diplomacy, and Blair's gamble was that by being first to endorse Bush's position he would secure his standing in Washington -- uncertain since Bush's election -- and steal a march on his European allies. In the event, although Britain claimed to have won America to working through the UN, Blair was ridiculed for his servility.

German reaction to the new turn in U.S. diplomacy had been gathering pace, and eventually spilled out in the recent elections, but in terms that demonstrated the elite's enduring diplomatic gaucheness. A bullish Gerhard Schröder appalled Americans by refusing to pay the bill for any new war -- saying out loud what many Germans believed, that the last Gulf War in 1991 was a scam to wring money out of the Bundesbank. When a junior minister in the outgoing administration got carried away with the anti-American mood and likened Bush to Hitler, the White House had its excuse to freeze out Germany. Only on Nov. 10, during a visit by Germany's new defence minister, Peter Struck, did the White House grudgingly accept that relations with Germany were now "unpoisoned" again.

With a reputation as a crook and owing his election as president to a scare over the far right, the elderly Jacques Chirac seemed ill-placed to project France's standing in the world. However, Chirac saw that Britain's premature Americanism, and Germany's premature anti-Americanism left an opening for France. Chirac proposed the formula that true friends are prepared to disagree to steer a course between Britain and Germany.

Understanding that European objections to being rail-roaded by the U.S.A needed to be expressed more diplomatically than the German government was capable of, Chirac made a show of holding out for a distinctive position in the Iraq debate.

In substance, there is no disagreement between France and America over the attractions of making an example of Saddam Hussein's Iraq. But France did persuade America to observe the niceties of consulting with its allies. For that Europeans will be grateful to Chirac, as they were scornful of Blair for being Bush's poodle.

Whether France can sustain its newly enhanced diplomatic standing is open to question. Certainly the Foreign Office will be working overtime to enhance Britain and do down the French.

For some years, critics have commented that the trend in "reality TV" will end with someone being killed for public entertainment. Strangely, when it did happen on British TV, nobody commented.

The three-part BBC2 series The Hunt for Britain's Pedophiles is so ghoulish that even champions of the child-protection industry have avoided comment. The series has regaled the public with barely disguised child pornography with such relish that it is difficult to see the difference between the emotional charge of outrage or titillation the filmmakers are trying to provoke.

But they saved the best till last.

Joining a police raid on a sex offender, the BBC was thrilled that ferret-keeper Mark Hansen allowed them to film him in situ while his overstuffed council flat was turned upside down. To the filmmakers' delight, Hansen spoke frankly about his perverse compulsion and his life of prison terms punctuated by police surveillance.

All parties concerned adopted the cod-psychology of sex-offender treatment, with its central proposition that offenders are not in control of their urges. Hansen admitted what he did was wrong, but claimed that he couldn't help himself. The police reduced the proposition to cliché: "The leopard doesn't change his spots." Only later did one inspector complain that if the offender can't help himself, are they supposed to provide a pedophile support group?

But is there really a social type called "pedophile", who is driven by irresistible psychological drives to commit sexual offences? Surely it is wrong to speak of "a pedophile," but rather of someone who commits the act of paedophilia. It is an act of moral depravity, no doubt, but the desire to cordon off the pedophile wing of society, just as we have the "sex offenders" wing of the prison, is a way of reaching for moral absolutes in an age where there are few to be found.

Are certain people hardwired to commit sex offences against young children? UK Home Office research on reconviction rates has indicated that sex offenders in Britain as a whole are less likely to reoffend than other kinds of offenders, and that reconviction of sex offenders aged over 30 is "exceptionally low."

Despite the level of public anxiety over the crime, it remains exceptionally rare in Britain -- with around 900 charges under crimes specifically dealing with sexual offences against children, and perhaps 1000 more acts against children dealt with under other sexual offences. The majority of these offences are one-offs committed by family members or people the children know - while, by the Home Office's admission, there are only a "handful" of the kind of predatory pedophiles that the BBC has focused on.

But watching The Hunt for Britain's Pedophiles, there was something unnerving about Hansen's openness. Even in the age of reality TV you might expect a greater sense of self-preservation. The follow-up to the interview came the next day, when it was reported that he had killed himself that night, rather than face another prison term -- and, presumably, the shame attached to the broadcast of the interview.

The BBC took his suicide note as consent to broadcast, while the inspector said that "the streets are safer". What is he suggesting -- death sentences for child pornographers? In the end it was not the gameshows that offered the public humiliation and suicide of a participant as public entertainment, but a "serious" documentary.