FRANCE: France's president is wading deeper into an ambitious Middle Eastern quest that may swamp even his energies, writes Lara Marlowe
WHEN THE French president Nicolas Sarkozy inaugurates the new Lycée Charles de Gaulle in Damascus tomorrow, he should remember the memoirs of the man known as "the last great Frenchman": "I went towards the complicated East with simple ideas," de Gaulle wrote.
Is Sarkozy naive to think he stands a chance of brokering an Israeli-Syrian peace accord (no doubt winning the Nobel Peace Prize); weaning Syria from its alliance with the Islamic Republic of Iran; freeing a Franco-Israeli soldier who is held by the Palestinian group Hamas and pacifying Syrian-Lebanese relations?
It's a tall order, even for a leader as energetic as Mr Sarkozy.
The Clinton administration tried and failed to make peace between Syria and Israel. The Bush administration didn't bother.
The West's principal Arab allies, Saudi Arabia and Egypt, think Mr Sarkozy is foolish. So do many of Mr Sarkozy's compatriots, especially his predecessor, president Jacques Chirac, who felt betrayed by Syrian president Bashar al-Assad.
When he was elected last year, "the most difficult decision" Mr Sarkozy had to take was whether to open a dialogue with Mr Assad, said an adviser to the French president. Mr Sarkozy began courting Assad in earnest after an 18-month Lebanese political stalemate was resolved with the election of president Michel Sleiman in May. Sarkozy rewarded Assad by inviting him to Paris, and accepted Assad's invitation to visit Damascus today and tomorrow.
"You can't win the lottery if you don't buy a ticket," the adviser to Mr Sarkozy said, explaining the investment in relations with Syria.
Mr Sarkozy's foreign policy closely follows Washington's.
"It is France's role to push the last two Arab neighours who have not made peace with Israel to do so," the adviser added.
Little matter that Michel Sleiman was originally the choice of the pro-Syrian opposition, or that Hizbullah, which is backed by Tehran and Damascus, gained everything it demanded in the May 21st Doha accord - including the possibility of blocking Lebanese government decisions.
Mr Sarkozy presents the agreement as a victory for French diplomacy and grounds for rehabilitating Damascus.
Diplomats say Sheikh Hamad al-Thani, the emir of Qatar, has deeply influenced Sarkozy's opening towards Syria. Qatar paid the ransom demanded by Libya for the liberation of the Bulgarian nurses in 2007.
Tomorrow, Mr Sarkozy, in his role as president of the EU, Mr Assad as president of the Arab League, Sheikh Hamad, as president of the Gulf Co-operation Council, and the Turkish prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan will hold a four-man summit in Damascus. As is often the case with Mr Sarkozy, the event may turn out to be more public relations than substance, but it is an unprecedented forum for discussing peace with Israel.
Turkey, it was revealed in May, has been sponsoring indirect negotiations between Israeli and Syrian officials in Istanbul. "They stay in different hotels, and the Turks carry messages back and forth," a French diplomat explained.
Mr Sarkozy's relations with Mr Erdogan are strained, but he is eager to barge into the Syrian-Israeli talks. And he was delighted that Mr Assad has asked France, in Sarkozy's words, "to co-sponsor with the US, when the time comes, direct Syrian-Israeli negotiations, and the application of the resulting peace accord, including security arrangements."
Mr Sarkozy will also ask Syrian authorities to deliver a letter from the father of the Franco-Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, who is imprisoned by the Palestinian group Hamas in the Gaza Strip, to his son. Mr Sarkozy has repeatedly portrayed Shalit as a hostage like the Bulgarian nurses or the former Colombian captive Ingrid Betancourt, though Shalit was serving in the Israeli army when captured.
Khaled Meshal, the leader of Hamas, lives in Damascus. Mr Sarkozy says he will not talk to Hamas because they are "terrorists," but he is happy to talk to Syria, which has been designated as a "state sponsor of terrorism" by the US state department every year for the past 29 years.
Mr Sarkozy has become something of a specialist at cosseting dictators, and he defends his new friendship with Assad with arguments similar to those he used last year regarding Moamar Qadaffi. There is barely a peep in France about Syria's human rights records. The Human Rights group Amnesty International reports that some 1,500 Syrians were arrested for political reasons in 2007 — "an astonishing number," notes Justin Moran of Amnesty Ireland.
These were added to hundreds of political prisoners already held. The prisoners include the lawyer Anwar al-Bunni, who received an award from the Irish Frontline group for human rights defenders in April.
Syria carried out at least seven public executions after unfair trials last year. Two of those executed were believed to be under the age of 18. "Anyone who dares to publicly criticise the Syrian authorities risks arbitrary detention, torture and ill-treatment," notes an Amnesty report on a Syrian Kurd who disappeared on August 15th and is believed held by Syrian security police.
Mr Sarkozy's adviser refers to the historic "triangle" between Syria, Lebanon and France which makes it impossible to disentangle relations between the three countries. Lebanon remains unstable. Hizbullah has rearmed (via Syria) since the 2006 war with Israel, and is preparing for the next battle.
There is frequent fighting between Sunni Muslim fundamentalists and Alawite neighbourhoods in the northern Lebanese city of Tripoli, and some observers believe Assad will intervene to protect his fellow Alawites.
There've been two high-level assassinations in Syria this year: the Lebanese extremist Imad Mugniyeh - suspected of planning the 1983 bombings of US marines and French paratroopers, and, at the beginning of August, Gen Mohamed Sleiman, who was Assad's top military advisor. Syrian and Lebanese sources point out that Sleiman had been questioned by the International Atomic Energy Agency about Syria's secret weapons programmes, and by the UN tribunal that is investigating the assassination of the Lebanese leader Rafik Hariri.
Murky deals between intelligence agencies, cloak and dagger intrigue and assassination are bread and butter in Damascus. There's always a chance that Mr Sarkozy will win the Middle East peace sweepstakes lottery, but in the meantime, he should be wary of the complicated East.
France and Syria: eight centuries of fraught relations
1187 - Salaheddin Ayyoubi drives French Crusaders from Jerusalem. On entering Damascus in 1920, the one-armed French general Henri Gouraud, French high commissioner in Syria, goes to Salaheddin's tomb and declares: "Salaheddin, we're back!"
13th century - Crusader King Louis IX (Saint Louis) takes the Christians of the Middle East under the protection of France.
1919 - The American King-Crane Commission criss-crosses the Ottoman province of Syria and concludes the population wish to keep the frontiers of Ottoman Syria, comprising Syria, Lebanon, Palestine and Jordan.
France and Britain ignore the study and in the early 1920s obtain League of Nations mandates attributing what are today Syria and Lebanon to France; Palestine and Jordan to Britain.
September 1st, 1920 - Gen Gouraud proclaims the establishment of the state of Greater Lebanon, to be a "safe haven" for the Maronites of Mount Lebanon. Gouraud attaches the Muslim areas of north and south Lebanon, the Bekaa Valley and Beirut to the Christian-ruled state.
1938-1939 - France gives the Syrian district of Alexandretta to Turkey, which incorporates it as Hatay province. Syria never accepts the loss of Alexandretta.
1943 - The French mandate ends, but French troops remain in Syria and Lebanon until they are driven out in 1946.
June 1945 - Britain intervenes to end brutal French repression of Syrian riots, during which the French army shells the ancient centre of Damascus, killing hundreds of Arabs.
1981 - In the midst of the Lebanese civil war, France blames Syria for the assassination of its ambassador to Beirut, Louis Delamare.
October 1996 - Jacques Chirac meets President Hafez al-Assad in Damascus. Chirac attends Assad's funeral in June 2000.
February 14th, 2005 - The former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri, a close friend of Chirac's, is blown up by a car bomb which also kills 21 other people in Beirut.
Hariri was on the point of calling for the departure of Syrian troops from Lebanon. Syria is the prime suspect in the assassination. Chirac freezes relations with Syria.
2007 - France's new president, Nicolas Sarkozy, sends envoys to Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, but breaks off contacts because Syria supports Hizbullah and the Lebanese opposition in a power showdown in Beirut.
May 2008 - The 18-month stalemate over the election of a Lebanese president ends with the Doha accords, brokered by Qatar. Sarkozy invites Assad to Paris in July.
September 3-4, 2008 - Sarkozy visits Damascus, the first formal visit by a French president in 12 years.