30 June 2009 - 21H59
Sarkozy’s alleged comments on Lieberman spark controversy
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu issued a statement defending his ultranationalist Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman (photo, at left) following Israeli media reports that French President Nicolas Sarkozy urged Netanyahu to fire Lieberman.
REUTERS - French President Nicolas Sarkozy has urged Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu "to get rid of" Israel's ultranationalist Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, Israeli media reports said on Tuesday.
Sarkozy's office had no immediate comment on the remarks Israeli newspapers and Channel 2 television attributed to him from his talks last Wednesday in Paris with Netanyahu. "You must get rid of this person," the Haaretz newspaper and Ynet website quoted Sarkozy as telling Netanyahu.
Netanyahu's office issued a statement saying "in light of the latest media reports", the prime minister voiced his "full confidence" in Lieberman during a meeting with ambassadors from European Union countries.
The reports said Sarkozy compared Lieberman, accused of racism by Israeli Arab lawmakers, with French far-rightist Jean Marie Le Pen, but retracted the remark after Netanyahu countered that the foreign minister left a different impression in private conversations.
A spokesman for Lieberman, leader of the ultranationalist Yisrael Beitenu party, said that if Sarkozy made the comments, they would amount to "intolerable" meddling in Israeli affairs.
Lieberman has angered Israel's Arab minority by questioning their loyalty to the Jewish state and suggesting some of their towns be ceded to Palestinian jurisdiction in exchange for Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank.
The reports about Sarkozy's purported remarks put a spotlight on a rift between Israel and the West over Netanyahu's rejection of calls for a total halt to Jewish settlement building.
Lieberman, himself a settler, has said settlements are no obstacle to peace.
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Comments
journalism and 3rd hand reporting
..."Haaretz newspaper and Ynet website quoted Sarkozy as telling Netanyahu"..., so the journalists have been sitting at the meeting, or what? Even if NS said this, he is just one of millions of people who said the same. If Israel is such democratic and peace-loving country, why do people vote then for such "Representatives"?
Which bad apple is ruining the bushel in Isreal?
if you review the supposed comments of French President Nicolas Sarkozy about Avigdor Lieberman,his perceptions are merely what other leaders choose not to dictate. Mr. Lieberman is merely one of the rotten apples in the bushel of Isreali politics.
What is worse, is the citizens of Isreal actually voted into office this group of morons.What Isreal needs is some politican whom is a statesman and not a loser.
Fish out of water.
Lieberman fits with a line of recalcitrance more suitable for an Israel prepared to unilaterally declare final borders, as per the territory Israel does not wish to retain. But he finds himself in a world where a constitutional succession in Honduras is internationally condemned as a coup, and where the likes of Abu Musab Abdul Waded feels confident about threatening France because of how France chooses to conduct its domestic affairs, vis-à-vis Islamists and the Burka. Whilst there is the possibility that, as per his public persona, Lieberman is simply a lout, with nothing more than ill-considered prejudice to propagate, underpinned by recalcitrance, and the return of Tzipi Livni would be a more balanced choice for an Israeli FM, it would be comforting to feel that the more internationally palatable alternative of Tzipi Livni, is not simply the seeking of a return to the status quo of muddling through, allied to appeasement, vis-à-vis moral ambiguity and deadly threats.