FRANCE - LIBYA

Gaddafi launches high-profile visit in France

Monday, December 10, 2007

Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi is expected to approve multi-billion-euro nuclear and aviation contracts during his controversial five-day visit in France, where he will meet President Sarkozy. (Report: C.Moore)

Staying in a heated Bedouin tent pitched near the Elysee presidential palace, Gaddafi is expected during the five-day visit to approve the purchase of three billion euros (4.4 billion dollars) of Airbus planes, a nuclear reactor and possibly Rafale fighter jets.
  
Gaddafi's son Seif el-Islam said the official visit, the veteran leader's first to France since 1973, would celebrate "the new relations" between the two countries. Gaddafi and Sarkozy will meet at least twice, Monday and Wednesday.
  
The invitation from Paris came after the release of Bulgarian medics imprisoned in Libya on charges of infecting children with HIV/AIDS. Sarkozy's ex-wife Cecilia played a role as negotiator.
  
Sarkozy visited Tripoli immediately afterwards, overseeing the signing of arms sales and an accord to build a nuclear plant for water desalination, underscoring Libya's return to the international fold after years of isolation.
  
But the French opposition has condemned Sarkozy's decision to welcome the leader of a country long accused of supporting terrorism and violating human rights.
  
In Sofia, the freed medics said Sunday they had cancelled a planned trip to France that would have coincided with Gaddafi's visit.
  
"We do not want the murderer and his victims to meet in Paris," one of the nurses, Christiana Valcheva, told AFP.
  
Critics were further incensed by comments Friday in which Gaddafi said it was "normal that the weak had recourse to terrorism."
  
Sarkozy, speaking at a summit of European and African leaders in Lisbon on Saturday where he met briefly with Gaddafi, defended his choice.
  
"If we do not welcome countries that choose the path of respectability, what can we say to those that choose the other path?" he asked reporters.
  
"I hope this visit is a success, that we can sign a certain number of economic agreements. Concerning the rest, his personality, he has his temperament, and it's not up to me to judge him."
  
French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said Gaddafi's visit did not mean France had forgotten the victims of the Libyan regime. But he also noted the Libyan leader had renounced terrorism and weapons of mass destruction.
  
"Should we believe him? Can we, like other European countries, do business with him? It's a risk, but we will keep our eyes open," he said in an interview to be published Monday in France's La Croix daily.
  
But former Socialist presidential candidate Segolene Royal rounded on Sarkozy in an interview Sunday, as her party announced it would boycott a visit to parliament by Gaddafi on Tuesday.
  
"Do we really have to kneel down before financial interests?" she asked, accusing Sarkozy of agreeing to "trample on a tradition of human rights for the sake of a few contracts."
  
Amnesty International issued a statement accusing the "dictator" Gaddafi, who came to power in a 1969 coup, of condoning the use of torture when the five Bulgarians were in Libyan prisons.
  
A one-time international pariah, Gaddafi has sought to mend bridges with Europe and the United States. In 2003 he announced the end of Libya's illegal weapons programmes and accepted formal responsibility for the Lockerbie plane bombing over Scotland.
  
Franco-Libyan relations have steadily improved since a 2004 accord on a Libyan compensation deal for the victims of a French DC-10 airliner bombing over Niger. The 1989 crash killed 170 people, including 54 French nationals.
  
The upturn paved the way for a visit by then French president Jacques Chirac in 2004. The two countries resumed defence cooperation in 2005.
  
But the circumstances of the Bulgarian medics' release have stirred political controversy in France, where a parliamentary inquiry is under way to determine whether the government bought their freedom by offering inducements to Libya.
  
Gaddafi's last visit to Paris in 1973 had sparked a similar outcry by critics of his authoritarian regime.
  
This time the Libyan leader is scheduled to meet with intellectuals and members of France's African community, visit the Versailles Chateau and take part in a hunt in woodlands near the capital.
  

related links

09/12/07 Sarkozy defends Gaddafi visit as protest grows
07/12/07 Libya eyes French aircraft and nuclear deal