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Basbous, Antoine
2 articles of this author have been cited in the European Press Review so far.
Victory over Gaddafi is France's doing
The Libyan rebels took control of Muammar al-Gaddafi's residence in Tripoli on Tuesday and are now celebrating their victory. France deserves much of the credit, writes the conservative daily Le Figaro: "France had the political backbone to take the initiative and as early as March 19 bombarded a column of Gaddafi's forces heading to Benghazi to crush the insurrection. Consequently it cannot help but be overjoyed that its bet paid off and it can now join the Libyans in celebrating the fall of their tyrant. Without this unilateral intervention, Resolution 1973 (adopted March 17) could have gone unheeded, because the lag time between coordinating the Nato strikes and actually carrying them out would have allowed the tanks to crush Benghazi and made Gaddafi's forces difficult to target without heavy collateral damage. Paris has every interest in Libya's quickly becoming a stable democracy and a key European partner. All the more so because it has the largest oil reserves in Africa."
» full article (external link, French)
More from the press review on the subject » International Relations, » Security Policy / Crises / War, » Politics, » France, » Libya
The south shore of the Mediterranean isn't eastern Europe
For political scientist Antoine Basbous, director of the Observatory of Arab countries, the Union for the Mediterranean (UPM) won't lead to the democratisation of the countries to the south and east of the Sea. "Let's not delude ourselves, [these countries] don't resemble in any way the eastern European countries that were liberated from the USSR and adopted the liberal a 'ready-made' democratic model. Despite the communist yoke, civil societies in the east aspired to western values. ... The two shores [of the Mediterranean] don't always hold the same cultural and religious values, and their leaders don't nurture the same political destinies. ... The principal preoccupation of these leaders isn't integration in the democratic club, but enshrining their regimes. ... [They] would like to 'gather' European financial contributions without having to change the daily lives of their population, nor reform their governments."
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More from the press review on the subject » EU Policy, » Africa, » Southern Europe
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