Sarkozy's real 'proposal'
Dina Ezzat examines what the French president actually had to offer -- besides his female companion -- on his first visit to Egypt
For the most part, the visit of French President Nicolas Sarkozy to Egypt was perceived for its personal rather than public part. The Christmas holiday that the French head of state chose to spend between Luxor and Sharm El-Sheikh with his newest girlfriend Carla Bruni, a pop singer and a former top model, was subject to much more attention, both in Egypt and France than the official visit that included the first official summit with President Hosni Mubarak during which the future of the bilateral relationship between Cairo and Paris and a host of serious regional matters, including the fate of the Lebanese presidency, were discussed.
The French press -- despite the statements made by their president in Cairo over the importance of the bilateral relationship between his country and Egypt -- was most interested in the fact that Sarkozy arrived in Egypt aboard the plane of a businessman, a friend of his. The debate in the French press, and for that matter in the National Assembly, was over the confusion between the presidency and the businessman, in view of precedents whereby Sarkozy used the yacht of another businessman for a summer holiday with his family following his presidential elections. Political opponents François Hollande and François Bayrou called for the immunity of the French Elysee against the influence of money.
For the Egyptian press, including the establishment dailies, Bruni was the story. Whether to call her "friend", "girlfriend", "fiancée" or "Miss Bruni" was an issue that was extensively debated in many a newsroom. The confusion -- reflecting an odd attempt to superimpose Islamic values on the head of a Western secular state -- was clear not just by the different names given to Bruni but by the excessive security measures imposed to prevent any "incidental photos" of the "couple" from being taken. The security limits were pushed too far when an AFP photographer was assaulted while trying to take a harmless shot of Sarkozy and his foreign minister Bernard Kouchner jogging in Sharm El-Sheikh -- an attack that subjected French police to harsh criticism from Robert Menard, secretary-general of Reportes Sans Frontieres. And for Egyptian MP Gamal Zahran, the issue was to take the government to task on whether Sarkozy and Bruni were allowed hotel intimacy in Egypt, "the custodian of Al-Azhar."
Beyond the French keenness to follow their president's travels in what he personally qualified as "a unique interest that was not granted to any of his predecessors," was the publicity that this keen interest generated for Luxor and Sharm El-Sheikh, "highly recommended" by Sarkozy in his concluding press statements in Cairo. And beyond the dominant chastity concerns of a certain quarter of the Egyptian society, there seemed to be little attention accorded to the political proposal that Sarkozy was making in Egypt.
So, while the Egyptian press was speculating on whether Sarkozy will make a romantic proposal to Bruni in the shade of Karnak or following a dive in Sharm El-Sheikh, the head of the Elysee was in fact making a totally different French diplomatic proposal regarding Egypt and the Middle East in general.
Judging by the political statements made by the French president during an interview accorded to Osama Saraya, the editor of Al-Ahram, and during the joint press conference with President Mubarak, Sarkozy was in Egypt on a short official visit that followed his private holidays to formally and plainly announce what many analysts suggested upon his arrival to the Elysee: an end to the special friendship that linked Paris with many Arab capitals. Arab countries are now confronted with a French president who openly calls himself -- while being feted with Egyptian hospitality -- "a faithful friend of Israel" who seems to be more worried about the influence of "terrorists", of which he does not exclude Hamas, than on the impact of Israeli colonisation of occupied Palestinian territories, despite a tactful reference to Tel Aviv's colonisation unhelpful influence on the course of Palestinian-Israeli peace talks and a promise to ask his Israeli friends when he addresses the Knesset next spring to make the necessary moves for peace.
Sarkozy, to judge by his own words, is still confident that despite this stance he can still garner the same confidence of the Arab world. "The Donors Conference that Paris hosted [last month] for the Palestinian Authority could not have been held in the French capital without the confidence of major Arab leaders and leading Arab capitals," Sarkozy said in answer to questions by the French press in Cairo. As he added, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas had asked him on three occasions to use the influence of France to help the efforts aiming at establishing a Palestinian state, which Sarkozy said cannot be achieved in the absence of peace with the Israelis.
"This is the point. Sarkozy is in this sense adopting the Israeli and American narrative on the Arab-Israeli struggle. For France now as for the US, there is no distinction between terrorism and militant resistance of occupation," commented Amr Elshobaki, a senior political analyst at the Al-Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies. According to Elshobaki, it is this close alignment between Sarkozy and US President George W Bush and the neo-cons that immediately marks the new French foreign policy on the Middle East.
However, as Elshobaki is quick to add, the closeness between the views of Paris and Washington on the Middle East is far from identical. "Both Sarkozy and Bush might hold the lack of democracy in the Arab world as solely responsible for militant extremism but unlike Bush, Sarkozy is not willing to intervene directly to induce democracy in the Arab world."
Statements made by Sarkozy during his joint press conference with Mubarak in Cairo on Sunday and during a gathering with a selected group of Egyptian intellectual and political figures hosted later on the same day by the French ambassador in Cairo, following the American style, reflected a distinct disinterest on the part of the French president to advocate democracy despite an all but blunt declaration that the support France under Sarkozy is offering to Egypt and other Arab regimes is strictly generated by the perception that it is these secular regimes that offer the alternative to Islamists regimes. "In this, unlike the American administration, Sarkozy is not showing much interest in questioning the shocking lack of liberal alternatives," Elshobaki said.
In Elshobaki's analysis, for Sarkozy, Egypt is not a political partner in the way it was for his predecessor Jacques Chirac despite the shared Deguallien political heritage. "It seems that Egypt is primarily a potential southern trade partner for Sarkozy," he added.
During his official and non-official talks in Cairo, Sarkozy stressed his keenness to promote trade with Egypt and to make France's nuclear technology available for Cairo in its pursuit to access peaceful nuclear energy for the future. Sarkozy re-affirmed his keenness to pursue his Mediterranean Union proposal that aims to lump northern and southern Mediterranean states in a framework that promotes economic cooperation essentially for the purpose of curbing illegal migration from south to north and to curtail all forms of extremism.
President Mubarak offered a welcome in principle to Sarkozy's proposal but asked for more detailed talks to be conducted by experts and officials on both sides. Sarkozy promised to send an envoy shortly to Cairo to take notes to see what Egypt -- among other North African countries -- expects of such a union.
"This is the kind of endeavour that Sarkozy wants to engage Egypt in. This is, however, an effort that is unlikely to pick up primarily due to the lack of European support and the questionable French financial ability to pursue such a scheme on its own," Elshobaki said.
Proposals made by European countries for different forms of partnership -- political, security, economic, and cultural -- with the southern Mediterranean states date back to the 1980s. The most prominent of which are the West Mediterranean Forum, the 5+5 talks proposed by France in 1990, the Mediterranean Forum proposed by Egypt and France in 1994 and the Barcelona process launched in 1995. Most recently, there was the New Neighbourhood Initiative proposed with the advent of the new millennium. However, none of these initiatives proved to be particularly fruitful. The conflicting interests of the countries of the north which focus on socio-economic and political reforms and those of the south that aspire to trade and investment with little attention to political liberties and human rights, consistently failed the purpose of genuine partnership. The continued Arab-Israel conflict and the failure of any such partnership initiatives to offer or even assist with a formula for peaceful settlement was another handicap.
"The union proposed by Sarkozy is not much different. He does not want to be able to resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict or to do much to reconcile the agendas of [north and south of] the Mediterranean," Elshobaki said. "Sarkozy wants this union to bypass some serious existing problems, including the Israeli occupation of Arab territories. This is a serious defeating element."
Recommend
Comment
Printer-friendly
