PARIS:PRESIDENT NICOLAS Sarkozy pulled out all the stops for his second Bastille Day yesterday, writes LARA MARLOWEin Paris
There were the usual medals, boots, epaulettes and armour streaming down the Champs-Élysées, but under the reign of Sarkozy I, there's more punch in the military music. Slovak MiG 29s and German Transall aircraft flew with the French air force.
The pièce de résistance was a paratroop landing by six men and one woman in blue, white and red space-age jumpsuits on the Place de la Concorde, in front of the reviewing stand. As they wafted through 1,200m of summer sky, the paratroopers unfurled French, European and UN flags.
In keeping with the French president's global ambition, the themes of European defence, the Middle East and the United Nations were all rolled into one big Bastille Day fete. UN blue helmets (none Irish) from Golan, Cyprus and Lebanon led the parade.
No previous French president watched the parade flanked by the secretary general of the UN and 43 heads of state and government, among them the Taoiseach, Brian Cowen. Irish general Pat Nash, the commander of the EUfor mission to Chad, was also present. Mercifully, no one brought up the Lisbon Treaty, and Mr Cowen returned to Dublin immediately after lunch in the Élysée Palace.
When the parade ended, the president beckoned his wife by calling out, in front of the television cameras, the diminutive "Carlita!" Some of the celebrity guests must have felt the undertow of unease.
It isn't anywhere near putsch level, but Libération newspaper yesterday noted that relations between the French head of state and military haven't been this bad since generals tried to overthrow de Gaulle during the Algerian war.
On radio yesterday morning Gen Jean-Louis Georgelin, chief of staff of the armed forces, admitted to "a certain disappointment" in the ranks, adding, "I'm not telling you that everything is fine in the army." The "misunderstanding set in" when Mr Sarkozy reprimanded officers for an accident in which 17 people were wounded in Carcassonne on June 29th, Gen Georgelin said. The president is widely reported to have screamed at officers: "You're all amateurs!" The chief of staff, Gen Bruno Cuche, who last December denounced "the impoverishment of the army", resigned.
"Amateurs" was the word used by a group of high-ranking officers who published an open letter in Le Figaro newspaper under a pseudonym on June 19th, two days after Mr Sarkozy presented a White Paper on defence involving massive cutbacks. The new policy smacked of "incoherence" and "amateurism", the officers wrote. "It's an imposture to present these [cutbacks] as progress in the efficiency of the military." Before the end of the month, the minister for defence, Hervé Morin, will provide details of 54,000 job losses in the French armed forces. Whole regiments are to be dissolved. Barracks will be shut down. There've been protests in the towns of Dieuze, Caen and Mourmelon. "The armed forces are there to ensure the security of the nation, not to promote local development," says Sarkozy.
One in two French tanks and aircraft no longer function. The government promises the cutbacks will make the military more efficient and better equipped. But the grumbling continues. Military intelligence launched an investigation to identify the officers who published the protest letter. The defence minister intervened to prevent the hard drives on officers' computers being searched.
Sarkozy did not attend the traditional defence ministry reception on Sunday night because he was busy with his Mediterranean summit. But he sent a message, via the Agence France Presse: "As head of the armed forces . . . I assure you of all my esteem and my friendship and I renew my confidence in your abilities . . ." Mr Sarkozy told French television yesterday: "It's not like French soldiers to act depressed."
The presence of the Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad in the reviewing stand increased the military's unease. Sarkozy claims it was Iran, not Syria, that planned the suicide bombing of the French paratroop headquarters in Beirut in October 1983, in which 58 Frenchmen were killed. A unit from the French military academy Saint-Cyr, named after one of the French military victims, paraded in front of Assad, who applauded. Nor did Assad flinch when a French actor stood in front of him to read the preamble to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
A few hundred metres away, activists from Reporters Without Borders were arrested for holding up a banner demanding "Liberty in Syria," and posters of imprisoned Syrian journalists.
The second act of Bastille Day took place at the Élysée Palace in the afternoon. An usher announced the arrival of Sarkozy, his wife Carla Bruni and the former hostage Ingrid Betancourt on the terrace behind the palace. Betancourt appeared with her hair in a chignon, pearl earrings, purple high-heeled shoes and a matching silk cocktail dress.
"As a hostage," Betancourt noted, "for years I couldn't dress as a woman. Little by little, I'm becoming myself again. Fifteen days ago, I was still chained to a tree." She dedicated the medal of Chevalier de la Légion d'Honneur to her companions in misfortune, the hostages still imprisoned in Colombia, and those who died in captivity.
Irish toast: celebrations at embassy
PRESIDENT NICOLAS Sarkozy's visit to Ireland next week will be in the spirit of "sympathy and friendship" the French ambassador to Ireland told guests gathered to celebrate Bastille Day at the embassy in Dublin yesterday.
Ambassador Yvon Roe d'Albert said that while Ireland's rejection of the Lisbon Treaty has "brought a challenge" it is one that can be overcome if "we work together". He continued: "No one can doubt that we are members of the same family . . . there is no reason to be pessimistic." France has "a desire to work more closely" with Ireland during its six-month presidency of the EU.
Hundreds of guests, including business figures and members of Dublin's diplomatic community, gathered to toast the French national holiday.
Among attendees were Minister for Food and Horticulture Trevor Sargent, former taoiseach Albert Reynolds, former leader of Fine Gael Alan Dukes and Martin Mansergh TD. Guests sipped champagne under cover of khaki tents supplied by the Irish Defence Forces and decked in the colours of the French flag.
The ambassador said this was the final posting of his career as a diplomat. As a Breton, he said, he felt he was "finding again my Celtic soul" in Ireland after years of postings in more tropical climes. - Mary Fitzgerald