PanARMENIAN.Net

France’s new face

Nicolas Sarkozy is going to establish Mediterranean Alliance with
North African countries. Turkey is not included in this Alliance.
09.05.2007 GMT+04:00

For the first time in the history of France the President of the
country is someone who is French only for one fourth. Nicolas
Sarkozy’s victory has already evoked contradictory comments both among
politicians and the world press. In his speech immediately after the
results of the election were announced Sarkozy said, `I will do
everything for France to go back to Europe, but this must be the
Europe protecting its citizens, and not a `Grecian horse’ of
globalization, which may be a serious threat for the social
attainments existing in different European countries.’

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ His first official visit President Sarkozy is
planning to make to Germany, and whatever is spoken about the `new
policy’, Jacques Chirac’s legacy in the home policy of France will
still exist for a long while. The truth is that Sarkozy will be more
moderate towards Russia than his predecessor was. The `friendship
age’ is becoming a thing of the past, and even President Putin didn’t
mean to Chirac what the late Boris Eltsin did. We may say that Sarkozy
is the New France establishing its relations with the rest of the
world on completely different and more pragmatic bases. The part of
his speech where the President spoke about the country’s relations
with the USA was the most unusual one. `America may count on our
friendship, and France will always be near. However, friendship also
means a possibility of thinking otherwise, and France will always
defend its positions in case of any kind of divergences,’ he said in
his speech. By the way Sarkozy was the only one among the French
politicians who has recently met President Bush.

Yet Sarkozy kept the most interesting thing for later. The newly
elected President of France is going to establish Mediterranean
Alliance together with North African countries. Turkey is not included
in this Alliance. If Sarkozy’s pre-election statements against
Turkey’s integration into EU do not undergo any changes, Turkey will
have to forget about Europe for the next 7 years. However Turkey’s
Prime-Minister Recep Erdoghan hopes that `the French President will
switch from the pre-election rhetoric to normalization of the
relations between their countries, which has lately been far from
being warm,’ Turkish Daily News writes. Turkey strongly hopes that
Sarkozy will set a veto on the bill about criminalization of the
denial of the Armenian Genocide, and, judging by what was stated in
the Turkish-Azeri press, will refuse `hearing the Armenian Community
in France’. For some reason Baku hopes that the newly elected
President will treat Azerbaijan better than his predecessor.

It is clear that our neighbor would love to see Armenia and France in
unhealthy relations with each other. However, it should not be forget
that France was one of the first countries who spoke against the
Armenian Genocide of 1915 and sheltered a big number of refugees. As
for Azerbaijan’s hope that the new President will bring some negative
changes in the relations of Armenia and France, it should be mentioned
that the Armenians have done so much for France that the
Armenian-French relations do not depend on the Presidents any more.

But unfortunately the elections didn’t put an end to some disorder in
the country. Ségolène Royal announced on Radio RTL, that if Sarkozy
wins the elections, the whole country and first of all the poor
suburban areas will suffer a strong wave of violence. Such a provoking
announcement was a shock for many French, particularly when this
provocation was heard and had its say in the further developments of
the events.

After the results of the election were announced cases of a number of
clashes were registered between the young and hot-blooded supporters
of Royal with the police and with the followers of Sarkozy. Over 400
cars were burned, shop-windows of many magazines were broken. The
police had to implement tear-gas to gain control over the crowd, just
what it had to do last year when the cities of Paris were in
disorder. By the way, that time the situation was taken under control
by the help of the very Sarkozy, so he is very unlikely to stand such
a situation again. However, with some unknown reasons, implementing
force during demonstrations in France and in a number of European
countries is not something unusual, while in other countries it is
regarded as a violation of human rights…

«PanARMENIAN.Net» analytical department