08.5.2007

Will Sarkozy change French foreign policy towards Arabs?

Sarkozy slammed for 'meddling' in Libyan affairs as Israelis, Palestinians eye policy change.

TRIPOLI - Libyan newspapers took French president-elect Nicolas Sarkozy to task for saying after his victory that he would give his support to five Bulgarian nurses on death row.

"Sarkozy should not have meddled in the affair of the Bulgarian nurses" condemned to death after being convicted of injecting Libyan children with blood tainted by HIV which can cause AIDS, said Al-Shams in an editorial.
"The blood of these children is not election merchandise," it said, calling it a "discouraging and clumsy debut."
On Sunday, after being declared the winner of the French presidential election, Sarkozy said France would stand by the nurses "who have been locked up for eight years."

Al-Jamahiriya said Sarkozy had no right "to treat the question of Libyan children sick with AIDS as if there were no more than 400 victims."
The six medics, in detention in Libya since February 1999, are currently on death row after being convicted of deliberately injecting Libyan children with the HIV-tainted blood at a hospital in Benghazi.
They were condemned to death in May 2004, in a verdict that was upheld last December. Libya's supreme court is to hear a final appeal later this month.
Bulgaria's President Georgy Parvanov congratulated France's Nicolas Sarkozy on winning presidential elections and, in a message made public, thanked him for his support of five Bulgarian nurses on death row in Libya.
Parvanov expressed his "deep personal gratitude and the gratitude of Bulgaria's entire society for your reiterated firm and categorical stance in support of the Bulgarian nurses wrongfully sentenced in Libya."

Bulgarian media hailed the comments as a sign of "extremely strong support," though some also noted Sarkozy's election night speech slip-of-the-tongue in which he referred to "the Libyan nurses".

Israel eyes change from Sarkozy, Arabs more of the same

Israeli politicians expressed hope of a change in French policy towards the Middle East Monday following the election victory of Nicolas Sarkozy, while Arab leaders called for a continuation of longstanding French support.
In Israel, opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu described Sarkozy, who has a Jewish grandparent, as "a friend of Israel" who was likely to pay greater heed to the security needs of the Jewish state.
Among the Palestinians, both president Mahmud Abbas and the democratically elected Hamas movement which leads the government expressed hope that his election would spell no change to French support.
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert spoke to Sarkozy over the phone "to congratulate him on his victory in the name of the state of Israel," Olmert's office said.
The French president-elect told Olmert: "I am a friend of Israel and Israel can always rely on my friendship," it added.
Olmert said in a statement that he was "convinced that the relations between Israel and France will develop and deepen during his mandate."
Netanyahu said that "with Sarkozy, France's politics will be much more balanced.
"He is sensitive to Israel's security needs and can make himself heard in Arab countries."
The Israeli press was equally enthusiastic.
"The Jewish origins of the next Catholic French president have provoked large hopes in Tel Aviv," said the top-selling daily Yediot Aharonot.
The Palestinian president "congratulated Mr Sarkozy on his election to the presidency and expressed to him his hope that France will continue its support for the Palestinian people and their rights," his spokesman Nabil Abu Rudeina said.
He also expressed hope that Sarkozy would "work toward lifting the siege" a reference to a freeze on direct aid to the Palestinian government imposed by the West after the democratically elected Hamas movement formed a cabinet alone in March 2006.

A Hamas spokesman also expressed hope of French support for an end to the aid freeze.
"We hope that this change will lead to cooperation with the national unity government and that Sarkozy will contribute to lifting the siege against the Palestinian people and support their legitimate rights," Fawzi Barhum said.
King Abdullah II of Jordan said he hoped Sarkozy would continue to maintain close French relations with the Arab world.
"France has strong and historic relations with Jordan and all Arab counties and has been always a key supporter of Arab causes, in particular the Palestinian cause," the official Petra news agency quoted the king as saying.
Syria, which had difficult relations with France under outgoing President Jacques Chirac, said it hoped for a more constructive relationship under Sarkozy.

Chirac was a close friend of billionaire Lebanese former premier Rafiq Hariri, who was killed in a 2005 bombing widely blamed on Syria, and has strongly resisted any opening to Damascus.
"We are expecting Mr Sarkozy to reevaluate relations between France and Syria which have been strained over the past two years because of the prejudiced views of the outgoing president towards Syria," the editor of government daily Ath-Thawra, Khalaf al-Jarad, said.
"We are hoping for relations based on objectivity and not the sort of personal animosity that characterised the Chirac era."
Lebanon's pro-Syrian President Emile Lahoud, who also had strained relations with Chirac after the French leader opposed a controversial 2004 constitutional amendment extending his term of office by three years, also expressed hope of a thaw under Sarkozy's leadership.

"I have the conviction that your presidential term will see a renewal and an intensification of relations between France and Lebanon," Lahoud said in a letter to the president-elect.

Prime Minister Fuad Siniora, whose rump anti-Syrian cabinet has received staunch backing from France since the departure of six pro-Damascus ministers last November, congratulated Sarkozy on his election and backed his idea of a Mediterranean Union similar to the EU.

http://www.middle-east-online.com/