Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president, met world leaders in Paris at exactly the same place he had welcomed Colonel Gaddafi more than three years ago.
What a difference the passing of time can make.
Just over three years ago, in December 2007, President Nicolas Sarkozy was welcoming Gadaffi to Paris and insisting to a French newspaper: “Gaddafi is not perceived as a dictator in the Arab world.”
“He is the longest serving head of state in the region,” Mr Sarkozy explained as he rolled out the red carpet.
“And in the Arab world, that counts,”
As Gadaffi was allowed to pitch his Bedouin tent in the elegant gardens of an official guest residence near the Elysee Palace, Mr Sarkozy denounced “those who excessively and irresponsibly criticised the Libyan leader’s visit”.
“If we don’t welcome those who take the road to respectability, then what do we say to those who take the opposite road?” True, the French president conceded “he has his personality, his temperament”.
Sarkozy’s closest aide, the Elysee Palace secretary-general Claude Gueant, said the six-day visit had produced sales of fighter jets and Airbuses worth 10 billion euros, “which means 30,000 jobs in France”.
The figure was later revised to 3 billion euros and officials admitted that it was mainly “memorandums of intent to negotiate” that had been signed.
Perhaps fortunately for the French planes flying over Libya this weekend, a fresh delivery of fighter jets was not delivered, or even ordered.
In August 2007 Mr Sarkozy had to deny there was any link between France brokering the release of five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor from Libya, and the Gadaffi regime’s subsequent decision to buy £200 million of anti-tank missiles and radio systems from a largely French owned company.
A French-Libyan agreement over a civil nuclear energy programme also had “absolutely nothing to do” with the prisoner affair.
“The contract was not linked to the release of the nurses,” insisted the French President. “What do they criticise me for? Getting contracts? Creating jobs for French workers?’’
A nuclear reaction in Libya would help deal with “terrorism and fanaticism” because it would help economic development, he said, pouring scorn on critics who said it would simply let the Libyan dictator gain nuclear weapons.
He is hardly the only world leader with embarrassing pictures linking him to Gaddafi.
Tony Blair was pictured embracing the dictator in his tent in the so-called “deal in the desert” which brought the regime in from the cold.
source : www.telegraph.co.uk
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