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| Bedouin gone cosmopolitan: Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi has so far signed contracts worth $17.6 billion during his six-day
visit to France. Christophe Ena/Reuters |
Qaddafi visit roils France
Critics say President Sarkozy ignored Libya's dismal human rights record while pursuing $17.6 billion in business deals.
By Susan Sachs | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitorfrom the December 13, 2007 edition
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Paris - In a blend of Bedouin rococo and realpolitik, Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi set up camp next to the Elysée Palace in the French capital this week.
So that he could receive guests in style during his six-day visit, his obliging hosts constructed a heated, carpeted, and TV-filled tent in the garden of the Paris mansion used to house visiting dignitaries.
And Mr. Qaddafi has been busy.
Flush with petrodollars, he has so far signed contracts valued at ¤12 billion ($17.6 billion) to buy French airplanes, military hardware, and nuclear power plants.
It has been a titillating week, with the fanfare, the tent, and the mega-contracts. But the visit has also divided President Sarkozy's government, outraged human rights activists, and prompted accusations that France is coddling a dictator in pursuit of its business interests.
"It's a question of balance, and in this case, the balance wasn't right," says Dominique Moïsi, director of the French Institute on International Relations.
Mr. Sarkozy, the first Western leader to host the strongman since Libya renounced terrorism, said he confronted Qaddafi over his country's dismal human rights record. But Qaddafi, ever the eccentric in sunglasses and a cape under gray Paris skies, told a television interviewer that the subject never came up. Qaddafi arrived on Monday and is set to leave on Saturday.
President Sarkozy angrily defended his welcome of Qaddafi as a logical response to Libya's renunciation four years ago of both terrorism and nuclear arms.
"I'm convinced that France should speak with everyone while firmly asserting its values," Mr. Sarkozy said, in an interview published Thursday on the website of magazine Le Nouvel Observateur.
"What can we say to the Iranians on the nuclear question," he added, "if we continue to ostracize those, like Libya, who have chosen the path of respectability, and if we don't talk with those who are going in the opposite direction?"
Like many Western countries, France has historically mixed pragmatism and idealism in its foreign policy.
It courted and protected dictators in its former colonies in Africa for decades. It competed vigorously with the US and Europe to promote its companies in the Middle East and Asia. In the face of American policy to condemn and isolate so-called rogue states, France long argued for tough-minded engagement.
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