International French leader enters submission to eliminate European conflict (10)
I believe the answer is:
difference
'international french leader' is the definition.
Although both the answer and definition are singular nouns, I can't see how one could define the other.
'enters submission to eliminate european conflict' is the wordplay.
'enters' means one lot of letters goes inside another.
'submission' becomes 'deference' (submitting or deferring to another's authority).
'to eliminate' suggests deleting specific letters.
'european' becomes 'e' (abbreviation e.g. EU).
'conflict' becomes 'if' (I am not sure about this - if you are sure you should give a lot more credence to this answer).
'deference' with 'e' taken away is 'dference'.
'dference' enclosing 'if' is 'DIFFERENCE'.
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for difference that I've seen before include "row" , "Change" , "Argument - dissimilarity" , "Diversity" , "Variation" .)