FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT

PlENZA, ITALY - France, warns Prime Minister Lionel Jospin, faces a grave national emergency. American tourists are abandoning France in droves and going, instead, to bella Italia. Jospin, a fierce critic of American capitalism and culture, has taken the extraordinary step of pleading with Frenchmen to smile at American visitors and actually be nice to them.

I can picture the Duke de la Rochefoucauld, walking his poodle along Avenue Foch in Paris when an overweight American tourist from Pocatello, Iowa, and his bovine wife, alarmingly clad in shorts and baseball caps, loudly accosts him with, "Say, fellow, which way to the nearest McDonalds?"

Instead of sneering, 'go back to your barn, you crass American peasants,'' I'm sure the good duke will answer Jospin's call to arms by patriotically attempting a wintry smile and politely replying, 'my dear American cousin, please allow me the honor and pleasure of showing you and your charming wife the way to your gastronomic goal....'

Unlike French, who hate to smile at anyone and experience humiliation and physical anguish when struggling to speak English, Italians love to smile and show off their English. So, many of the Americans who used to go to Paris to be abused by waiters have now decamped to Rome and Tuscany, where being clipped with a smile is much nicer than being robbed with a scowl.

As a result, Florence and its environs have become a giant, Disney-like theme park.. ItalyWorld.. a teaming nightmare of bus tourists and mobs of scruffy students. Beautiful southern Tuscany - being here is like walking through a Cezanne painting - is also nearing capacity. American English seems to have replaced Italian almost everywhere. Italians couldn't care less: they are smiling all the way to their Swiss banks.

What's more, they are sticking it to the sour French. Germans love the French, but do not respect them, French respect Germans, but do not love them. Italians don't respect or love the French. They love Americans, as Italy's new conservative prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, underlined on taking office. Not surprisingly, Americans love Italy.

Italy's triumph over France in tourism marks the latest battle in a 700-year old 'kulturkampf' (culture war) between the two great Latin nations, a bitter, ceaseless struggle fought over art, music, cuisine, fashion, interior design, architecture, and of course, wine. Italy won the Renaissance hands down. France then invaded Italy and stole much of its art. In the 17th and 18th centuries, France raced ahead of Italy, notably in gastronomy, fashion, and art. The 19th century was ferociously contested: Italy totally defeated France in music, but the French routed the Italians at century's end with Impressionism.

The 20th Century was not kind to Italy. Its artists, designers and cooks fell into deserved obscurity, or moved to Paris, while French food, fashion design and art became the unchallenged hallmarks of civilized living. But at the end of the century, Italy suddenly launched a powerful counterattack, catching the smug French with their pantalons around their ankles.

In the last decade, fine Italian cuisine burst upon the world, entrancing diners with its remarkable flavors, textures, lightness, delightful use of vegetables, and lack of animal fat. By contrast, French cuisine, based on high cholesterol meats and butter, and over-engineered food reductions, had become stodgy, stultified, and boring. Modernization attempts produced 'nouvelle cuisine," a fusion of bad French and bad Japanese food, fit only for anorexic females and male ballet dancers. Worse yet, mad cow disease has cast a dark shadow over beef-laden French cuisine.

French gastronomy has been seriously injured by thc foolish policies of Jospin and his socialists that caused labor costs to skyrocket. A first-class dinner for two in Paris can now cost US $500; in Rome, under $200. The increasing mass-market industrialization of food production under the European Union has ruined local French producers and brought in tired, tasteless North-American style foods grown in distant locations. Italy still relies on local suppliers.

Italian cuisine, now considered ultra chic, has conquered North America while French restaurants are in a sharp decline everywhere. Germans have almost totally abandoned their dreadful medieval folk cuisine and dine in Italian restaurants. Japanese love Italian food. Even the insular British are going Italian. In short, Italy is now "numero uno" in the world of food.

The French have been hammered by Italian designers like Prada and Missoni, challenged by Tuscan winemakers, and battered by North America's cholesterol terror. The French are in deepening gloom over the ascendancy of the wily Italians. Far more than pride is at stake. International popularity of a national cuisine means hundreds of millions of agri-export business. While French exports of fatty fois gras and brie cheese languish, Italy is filling ships and planes with parmigiano and pecorino, pastas galore, increasingly sophisticated wines from Chianti, Montalcino and the Abruzzo, heavenly olive oils, truffles, mushrooms and salami.

Every new Italian restaurant that opens around the globe means more exports for Italy. Every tourist to Italy returns home with tales of gastronomic wonder and enchantment. And just wait until the world discovers Italy's two most exquisite but, so far, little-known pastas: pici and strongozzi!