World Notes France

Since taking office last month as France's first female Prime Minister, Edith Cresson has managed to incite fury abroad with her biting bouche. Shortly after her appointment, she declared on television that Japan was an "aggressor" that "lived in a universe different from ours, a universe of domination." The remarks prompted the Japanese Foreign Ministry to lodge a complaint with the French ambassador, and sparked protests outside the French embassy in Tokyo.

Last week Cresson drew fire again, this time for saying that Frenchmen are more interested in women than are men in the U.S., Germany and Britain -- where, she contended, a quarter of the males are homosexual. When these allegations, made in a 1987 interview for a book about women, were published in Britain's Sunday Observer, Cresson, 57, claimed that it was "not fair play" to pull an old conversation "out of a drawer." Throughout England, stiff upper lips quivered. "They don't call Paris 'Gay Paree' for nothing, you know," retorted the tabloid Sun.