France accomodates Muammar Gaddafi

Libyan president Muammar Gaddafi is paying a controversial five-day visit to France, starting this December 10th. Pascal Aubert considers that "in the big economic competition, Sarkozy's choice of diplomacy is quite clear, he has opted for efficiency. It is true that if we were obliged to stop frequenting China ... or Saudi Arabia because people are decapitated in public there, we would only be able to sell nuclear reactors and high-speed trains to our immediate neighbours! You have to admit that the spectacle of the President of the Republic patting the former, unrepented godfather of international terrorism on the back is shocking. But it is no more than that, no less shocking than François Mitterrand welcoming the same Gaddafi in Crete or Jacques Chirac going out of his way to Baghdad, then a haven for Palestinian terrorists. Nicolas Sarkozy is merely up-dating a traditional French real-diplomacy."

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