„Nicolas Sarkozy hatte damals schon diesen Willen, sich unentbehrlich zu machen und immer dabei zu sein, war hibbelig, übereifrig und begierig, zu handeln“, schreibt Jacques Chirac in seinen Memoiren, aus denen die französische Tageszeitung Le Parisien Auszüge veröffentlichte.
„Er war immer mehr als ein einfacher Mitarbeiter“, schreibt Jacques Chirac. Sarkozys Unterstützung von Biedermann des bürgerlichen Lagers Edouard Balladur (im Hintergrund von Chiracs Erzfeind Valéry Giscard d’Estaing manövriert worden) bei der Präsidentschaftswahl gegen ihn habe ihn verletzt, gesteht der einstige politische Ziehvater von Nicolas Sarkozy, Jacques Chirac.
Der erste Band der Memoiren, der von Donnerstag an im Handel erhältlich ist, beschreibt den Beginn von Chiracs politischer Karriere bis zur Präsidentschaftswahl 1995.
TIME previews the transfer of power of the EU presidency from French President Nicolas Sarkozy to Czech President Vaclav Klaus and says some western European nations are concerned about the turnover.
Two-day summit talks between Brazilian and European leaders in Rio de Janeiro concluded with Brazil and France signing a $12 billion arms deal in which Brazil agreed to buy fifty helicopters and technology to build five submarines, including a nuclear-powered submarine from France.
After the U.S. House of Representatives voted this weekend to pass the U.S.-India nuclear deal (it still must pass the U.S. Senate), Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh meets today with French President Nicolas Sarkozy to discuss boosting civilian nuclear energy trade, the BBC reports.
France’s President Nicolas Sarkozy today begins a trip to Syria aimed at shoring up relations between Paris and its former colony.
The BBC profiles the trip and says bilateral relations have slumped since the 2005 assassination of Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, which some analysts accused Syria of masterminding.
The American Jewish Committee (AJC), in a letter to French President Nicolas Sarkozy, mourned the loss of the French soldiers killed this week and wished a speedy recovery to the injured. “We applaud the bravery of the French forces in Afghanistan – as we salute your principled leadership in the war against terrorism, in stalwart alliance with the United States, and your unwavering efforts to counter Islamic extremism, in Afghanistan and elsewhere,” wrote AJC President Richard J. Sideman and Executive Director David A. Harris.
AJC has a longstanding relationship with France, maintaing an office in Paris under the directorship of Valérie Hoffenberg.
The full text of the letter is below:
New York, August 21, 2008
Dear President Sarkozy,
The American Jewish Committee extends its profound condolences to you, to the French people and to the aggrieved families on the death this week of ten French soldiers in Afghanistan. We wish a quick recovery to the other twenty-one soldiers who sustained injuries in the Taliban attack.
During your visit to Afghanistan this week, you vowed that the French contingent would remain in that country despite the deadly attack, telling your troops, “The work you are doing here is vital.” We applaud the bravery of the French forces in Afghanistan – as we salute your principled leadership in the war against terrorism, in stalwart alliance with the United States, and your unwavering efforts to counter Islamic extremism, in Afghanistan and elsewhere.
We express our deep appreciation for the service and sacrifice of France’s 3,000 troops in Afghanistan. Please accept, once again, our sincere condolences for this week’s tragic losses.
The Transatlantic Institute issued a report commissioned from defence and Middle East affairs analyst, Kassem Ja’afar. The report looks into the two scenarios described by French President Nicolas Sarkozy in a speech last August 2007: bombing Iran or living with Iran’s bomb.
The Irish Times reports the country’s leaders have attempted to play down comments by French President Nicolas Sarkozy that Ireland should hold another referendum vote on the Lisbon Treaty to reform the EU constitution.
New York, June 25, 2008 – On the second anniversary of the kidnapping of an Israeli soldier into Gaza, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) renewed its call for world leaders and governments to continue to press Hamas for the immediate and unconditional release of Gilad Shalit.
“Two years is long enough. Gilad Shalit must be freed immediately and reunited with his family,” said Glen S. Lewy, ADL National Chair, and Abraham H. Foxman, National Director. “If Hamas wants to show the world that it is serious about entering into a more peaceful period with Israel, perhaps no step would be more symbolically or strategically important than the immediate release of Israel’s captured soldier.”
In his letters from captivity, Cpl. Shalit has told his family that he is in poor health and desperately in need of rest and medical attention.
“World leaders need to reinforce the message to Hamas that enough is enough, and that there is little to gain by holding out any longer against Israel’s efforts to secure his release,” said Messrs. Lewy and Foxman. “When a life hangs in the balance and a deal is so close, there is no excuse for needlessly prolonging the process and the pain inflicted on Cpl. Shalit’s family.”
ADL expressed appreciation to the government of Egypt for its concerted effort on the initiative to secure the immediate release of Cpl. Shalit and to halt the barrage of rocket fire and mortar attacks from Hamas-controlled territory in Gaza.
“We also express appreciation to President Nicolas Sarkozy of France for his efforts to speed the release of Gilad Shalit as both an Israeli and French citizen,” the ADL leaders said.
The Anti-Defamation League, founded in 1913, is the world’s leading organization fighting anti-Semitism through programs and services that counteract hatred, prejudice and bigotry.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy presented a new defense strategy aimed at overhauling the French military. Nicolas Sarkozy said terrorism is now the main threat facing France.
“He said the intelligence budget for new satellites, drones and other surveillance equipment would double, and that up to 10,000 soldiers would be assigned to internal security duties ranging from pandemics to cyber-attacks. A new national security council will be set up at the Elysee palace. A former ambassador to Iraq and Algeria has been named to hold the newly-created post of national intelligence co-ordinator.”
After an ambitious start, analysts say French reforms have stagnated and President Nicolas Sarkozy’s popularity has dwindled in his second year, Newsweek International reports.
“It would be easy at this point to give up on Sarkozy as a lost cause and revert to the traditional view: that France simply cannot be reformed. After all, his predecessor, Jacques Chirac, also took office as a supposedly pro-American reformer, but then quickly backed down in the face of crippling strikes.”
French President Nicolas Sarkozy has withdrawn his support for former British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s bid to become the first president of the European Union, the BBC reports.
Newsweek International reports on France’s success in using small combat units to partner with different international military alliances.
“A year into his first term, in fact, French President Nicolas Sarkozy is using his warm relations with Washington and his military’s strong record fighting in Africa and the Balkans to help re-establish France publicly and formally as a leading player in NATO, more than four decades after President Charles de Gaulle pulled out of the alliance’s integrated command and kicked its offices out of Paris. At the same time, he’s working to put France at the fore of a separate European Union defense force and extend its influence eastward to the Persian Gulf and South Asia. And if France really wants to project itself on the world stage this way, well, it couldn’t happen at a better time. U.S. forces are stretched thin, and there are only a handful of other armies with the training, the bases, the organization and, most important, the political will to kill and die in far corners of the planet to keep local wars from emerging into global threats. The shortlist includes the Brits-and the French, and that’s about it.”
Wenn ein Mann von allen gehasst wird, muss man die Gründe dafür überprüfen. Wenn ein Mann von allen geliebt wird, muss man das auch überprüfen. (Konfuzius)
Die Galionsfigur der antichinesischen Propaganda im Westen, sprich der Sektenführer Dalai Lama, ist zum Ehrenbürger von Paris ernannt worden. Nur die Sozialisten und Grünen im Stadtrat von Paris stimmten dafür, wie der französische Sender France Info berichtete.
Nicolas Sarkozy hat seinem chinesischen Amtskollegen Hu Jintao eine persönlich gewidmete Biografie des in China beliebten französischen Generals und Staatsmannes Charles De Gaulle geschenkt, sagte der ehemalige Premier Jean-Pierre Raffarin, der Zeitung Le Parisien. Dies sei ein Zeichen einer “Politik der Freundschaft”. “Die französische China-Politik ändert sich nicht”, fügte Raffarin hinzu. “Es gibt eine starke Bindung zwischen Frankreich und China.”
Jean-Pierre Raffarin, der mit Jacques Chirac als ausgewiesener Kenner und Liebhaber der chinesischen Kultur gilt und übermorgen Chinas Premier und Staatspräsidenten in Peking treffen wird, kritisierte aufs Schärfste die “unangemessene” Entscheidung des Stadtrats von Paris, den Dalai Lama zum Ehrenbürger zu ernennen. “Das ist eine rein lokale Angelegenheit ohne jede nationale Auswirkung.”
On the second day of the NATO summit in Bucharest, French President Nicolas Sarkozy indicated he intends to have France rejoin NATO’s military command, which it quit in 1966 under Général De Gaulle, and said he will make a formal decision by the end of the year. Nicolas Sarkozy also said France was prepared to deploy some 800 troops to eastern Afghanistan.
“The next few years will be crucial to determining which direction European Security and Defense Policy (ESDP) goes. Some factors will favor further growth and development.
First, the Lisbon ‘reform’ treaty should soon be ratified, introducing important new innovations to the EU’s Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) and, more importantly, putting to rest the intra-EU quarrel that has impeded progress for the last five years.
Second, the divisions that arose over the Iraq War are fading, both Europe and the United States and within Europe itself. This should facilitate a more reasoned discussion of Europe’s role in global security.
Third, with the Iraq and Afghanistan wars continuing and a major presidential campaign underway, the United States has entered a period in which openness to independent European efforts is apt to increase, provided that these efforts are viewed as generally positive for the transatlantic relationship.
Fourth, the French presidency of the EU, which begins in June 2008, is very likely to attempt to push ESDP forward into a new phase.”
French President Nicolas Sarkozy and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown made a joint push for greater regulation of European banks, calling for “full and immediate disclosure” of potentially bad debts.
Michelle Smith and Charles Ferguson evaluate Sarkozy’s nuclear deals in the Middle East, in the International Herald Tribune.
“The recent war games in the Gulf with France, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates are connected to French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s nuclear diplomacy. Sarkozy has been leveraging France’s leading civilian nuclear technology to gain diplomatic, commercial and military advantages with countries in the Middle East, as well parts of Africa and Asia. In response, nonproliferation experts have voiced their unease at the idea of exporting potentially nuclear bomb-usable technologies to proliferation-prone regions.”
11 heures: Le cercueil de Lazare Ponticelli pénètre dans l’église Saint-Louis des Invalides, porté par onze légionnaires au képi blanc et encadré de quatre pionniers barbus au large tablier de cuir, hache sur l’épaule, appartenant au 3e régiment étranger d’infanterie, héritier du 4e régiment de marche de la Légion étrangère où avait servi Lazare Ponticelli. Une minute de silence est observée dans les administrations et les drapeaux mis en berne sur les bâtiments publics.
Sous les ors de “l’Eglise des soldats”, 500 personnes suivent les obsèques religieuses, dont le président Nicolas Sarkozy et son prédécesseur et ancien mentor Jacques Chirac.
12 heures: Le cercueil est acheminé vers la cour d’honneur entre une double haie de membres de l’association “Le Poilu d’Epernay”, fusil Lebel à la main, revêtant l’uniforme français de 1915: casque d’acier Adrian, capote, pantalon et bandes molletières en drap bleu horizon, brodequins de cuir. L’académicien et ancien homme politique Max Gallo, lui aussi fils d’immigrés italiens, prononce alors une allocution émouvante évoquant avec prestance les faits d’armes de Lazare Ponticelli qui “nous rend fiers, par toute sa vie, d’être son frère humain”.
12 heures 45: La “Marche funèbre” de Chopin accompagne le pas des légionnaires qui portent le cercueil vers la sortie. Il sera inhumé cinq heures plus tard, dans l’intimité, dans le caveau familial du cimetière d’Ivry-sur-Seine.
15 heures 40: Nicolas Sarkozy pénètre seul sous le Dôme des Invalides. Près du tombeau en bronze du maréchal Ferdinand Foch, généralissime des armées alliées à la fin de la Grande Guerre, il dépose une gerbe devant une plaque dévoilée par deux collégiens.
La plaque porte les mots suivants: “Alors que disparaît le dernier combattant français de la première guerre mondiale, la Nation témoigne sa reconnaissance envers ceux qui ont servi sous ses drapeaux en 1914-1918. La France conserve précieusement le souvenir de ceux qui restent dans l’Histoire comme les Poilus de la Grande Guerre”.
16 heures: Dans une longue allocution, le président de la République Nicolas Sarkozy déclare notamment: “En cet instant, dans toute la France, la pensée de chacun se tourne vers ces femmes et ces hommes qui nous ont appris la grandeur du patriotisme qui est l’amour de son pays et la détestation du nationalisme qui est la haine des autres”.
17 heures: La cérémonie s’achève. Le choeur de l’Armée française interprète “La Madelon”, le chant des poilus.
Le 11 novembre 2006, René Riffaud avait été le seul survivant de la «Grande Guerre» à se rendre sous l’Arc de Triomphe pour la commémoration de l’Armistice. Crédits photo: Euler/AFP
French President Nicolas Sarkozy told Jewish community in Paris he would refuse to greet any world leader who refused to recognize Israel – a remark apparently ruling out any face-to-face meetings with Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Nicolas Sarkozy announced he would visit Israel in May to mark the 60th anniversary of Israel’s founding after a March visit to Paris by Israel President Shimon Peres.
” ‘A man who believes is a man who hopes,’ said the president. ‘And the interest of the republic is that there be a lot of men and women who hope.’ He advocated a new ‘positive secularism’ that ‘doesn’t consider religions a danger, but an asset.’ And he declared, ‘In the transmission of values and in the teaching of the difference between good and evil, the schoolteacher will never be able to replace the priest or the pastor.’
Those are fighting words in strictly secular France. Suddenly, faith, once an entirely private affair, has infused the president’s political discourse. In Riyadh on January 14, Sarkozy referenced the Lord 13 times in a speech to Saudi Arabia’s Consultative Council, evoking a ‘transcendent God who is in the thoughts and the heart of every man.’ That was news to France’s estimated 15 million atheists and agnostics, a quarter of the country.”
by Anne Applebaum, Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist, member of the editorial board of the Washington Post
Washington, February 5, 2008
Enfin, the rumors confirmed! Last weekend, President Nicolas Sarkozy of France married his singer-supermodel sweetheart, Carla Bruni, in a 20-minute civil ceremony at the Elysée Palace, the French White House. A city official performed the service. The bridal party consisted of family members plus one or two fashionable friends. Apparently the bride wore white.
Somehow, though, the first French presidential nuptials since 1931 were not an entirely joyous national event.
Though a few people tried to say something nice about the wedding–”C’est formidable,” declared Bernadette Chirac, ex-first lady of France–the Sarkozy-Brunis woke up the following morning to news that the nation did not approve: Already on a downward trajectory, support for Sarkozy’s presidency has plunged. From a high of 67 percent last July, Sarkozy’s support in France had dropped to 54 percent in January. As of yesterday, this number had slipped to 41 percent, with more than three-quarters of the French pronouncing themselves annoyed by their head of state’s very public private life, in polling done before and after the presidential nuptials. For a country that treated news of Sarkozy’s divorce last year with a shrug of Gallic indifference, this is incredible.
True, this news did follow a flurry of new photographs of Bruni–sorry, Madame la Presidente–in various stages of undress (including some suspiciously recent pictures of the new first lady wearing nothing but black leather boots and a wedding ring). Nevertheless, I don’t believe that a hitherto undiscovered French prudishness is driving the surge of popular annoyance. The fact is that the private peccadilloes of a public figure loom largest when they seem to confirm his or her other character flaws. The Monica Lewinsky affair hurt Bill Clinton because it reminded everyone of the president’s reputation for political slipperiness. Sarkozy’s whirlwind romance is damaging because it reminds everyone that his public behavior is no less wacky and unpredictable than his private life.
Certainly this is true on the international stage, and especially in Europe, where diplomacy normally moves at the sedate pace of a Viennese waltz and where Sarkozy’s penchant for whirling off in all directions at once is, shall we say, unsettling. Indeed, “controlling Sarko,” as one Scandinavian politician put it to me, has now become a task for the entire European diplomatic corps.
At times this requires straightforward damage control: The French president seems, for example, to be obsessed by Turkey, whose accession to the European Union he wants to prevent at all costs. Allegedly he reads his foreign ministry’s Turkey dossiers personally and intervenes to prevent any language suggesting possible Turkish membership from appearing in any official document. Since barring Turkey isn’t actually E.U. policy yet, others are left to pick up the pieces.
But his colleagues have enough work just keeping track of him. Since becoming president, Sarkozy has opened a new military base in the United Arab Emirates, conducted (unsuccessful) peace negotiations in Lebanon, invited Moammar Gaddafi to Paris (where the Libyan leader cheerfully told the press he had not discussed any human rights issues with his French host) and promoted French nuclear energy technology while simultaneously pushing Iran to halt its own nuclear development. So far he’s visited some 20 countries. One French newspaper gleefully quoted King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia declaring that “President Sarkozy resembles a dashing and high-spirited thoroughbred, but like all thoroughbreds, he should submit to be reined in to find his balance.”
Sarkozy’s domestic policies reach in multiple directions, too. One bemused British columnist records that the French president has, since coming to office, “decided to launch a ‘Marshall plan’ for the suburbs, to ban advertisements on state television, to found 10 universities, to reform the 35-hour week, to protect French banks from sovereign wealth funds . . . and to tax mobile phones.” Sarkozy has also asked the economist Amartya Sen to find a way of including “quality of life” in French statistics, the philosopher Edgar Morin to outline a renaissance in the “politics of civilization” and the socialist Jacques Attali to come up with “300 decisions for changing France.”
Maybe this whirlwind of hyperactivity will eventually add up to something; certainly it makes a welcome change from the somnolence of the later Chirac years. But it definitely provides an uneasy context for a public romance. If Sarkozy were a staid and predictable politician, his tabloid love affair and abrupt marriage might be joyously embraced by a dewy-eyed nation. In present circumstances, it looks like one more madcap adventure to add to the growing list.
Reprinted with kindly permission of The American Enterprise Institute.
Le président du Conseil constitutionnel, Jean-Louis Debré, proche de Jacques Chirac, estime qu’il faut «faire attention à ne pas désacraliser les fonctions officielles». “À partir du moment où vous avez reçu une mission du peuple, quelle que soit cette mission, il y a une certaine tenue à avoir”, confiait en substance Jean-Louis Debré, le 3 février 2008, à l’antenne de la radio de la communauté juive de Paris Radio-J, faisant allusion au tapage médiatique consécutif à l’annonce du mariage de Nicolas Sarkozy avec la célébrité de la jet-set Carla Bruni.
“Quand on regarde l’histoire du pays, aussi bien de Gaulle, Pompidou, Giscard, Mitterrand, Chirac, ont eu une certaine conception de leur rôle de président de la République, et cette conception était avec une certaine retenue. Ils incarnaient, ils incarnent la France”, ajoute Jean-Louis Debré.
“Je pense qu’il y a une certaine attitude à avoir quand on représente tous les Français et quand on incarne la France”, a-t-il poursuivi, tout en se défendant de “porter un jugement” sur Nicolas Sarkozy.
Newsweek International examines the legacy French President Nicolas Sarkozy seems to want to create: one focused on strong trans-Atlantic relations, unabashedly Christian, but equally defined by warm relations with Muslim countries.
In der Neuen Zürcher Zeitung schreibt Marc Zitzmann über Frankreichs Staatspräsident Nicolas Sarkozy, und sucht in neuen Publikationen nach Antwort auf die Frage, was der Sarkozysmus sei.
“Mit ungleich mehr Gewinn liest sich da «Le Téléprésident» von François Jost und Denis Muzet (Éditions de l’Aube). Kernthese dieses «Essai sur un pouvoir médiatique» ist, dass mit Sarkozy «erstmals ein Präsident eine Methode zum System erhebt, deren Ziel es ist, das Handeln und die Kommunikation über dieses Handeln aufs Engste zu verbinden».
Die Nähe des Staatsoberhaupts zu Medienmoguln, seine Selbstdarstellung als Zelebrität und sein von Jost und Muzet als «telepopulistisch» charakterisiertes Weltbild wurden schon oft thematisiert. Faszinierend und zugleich verstörend ist dagegen die mit Argumenten und Beispielen gestützte These, Sarkozys Kommunikationspolitik (und seine Politik tout court) sei von A bis Z für die Flimmerkiste formatiert.
Die sehr diversen Konsumenten der «Fast News» bediene der «Telepräsident» jeden Tag mit einer anderen «Postkarte», die jeweils einer spezifischen Zielgruppe zugeeignet sei: «Nach Sarkozy bei Airbus, Sarkozy im Krankenhaus folgt Sarkozy bei den Feuerwehrleuten, Sarkozy bei den Hochseefischern.» Die Sequenzierung in täglich neue, in sich abgeschlossene Episoden verleihe der präsidentiellen Kommunikation den Charakter einer Fernsehserie.”
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