Sarkozy defends Gaddafi, on five-day visit in France

Dec 10, 2007, 16:37 GMT

Paris - French President Nicolas Sarkozy on Monday fiercely defended Moamer Gaddafi, shortly after the Libyan leader began a controversial five-day visit to France.

'Today, France is welcoming a head of state who decided definitively to renounce weapons of mass destruction,' Sarkozy told journalists after a one-hour meeting with Gaddafi at the Elysee Palace.

'France is welcoming a head of state who definitively renounced terrorism,' Sarkozy went on. 'A head of state who has compensated the victims' of Libyan state-sponsored terrorist acts.

The French president said Libya wanted to become a full-fledged member of the international community. 'It is my deepest conviction that France must speak with all those who want to be integrated in the international community,' he said.

Apparently unfazed by the controversy that preceded his arrival in Paris Monday afternoon, a smiling Gaddafi shook hands with Sarkozy and waved to journalists before entering the Elysee Palace.

His trip to France has provoked an angry debate in France, with even members of Sarkozy's government openly critical of the visit.

In an interview published Monday in the daily Le Parisien, Junior Minister for Human Rights Rama Yade fiercely criticized the date of the visit, which begins on World Human Rights Day, and said she would not take part in the state dinner Sarkozy was hosting for Gaddafi later Monday.

'Colonel Gaddafi must understand that our country is not a doormat on which a leader, terrorist or not, can clean his bloody feet of their infamy,' Yade told the daily.

Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner also appeared to distance himself from the visit, telling France Inter radio he was 'resigned' to Gaddafi coming to France and hoped that it would help speed up the 'evolution' in Libya.

Apparently shaken by the controversy, Sarkozy also defended his own human rights record, saying that he and his government had liberated the Bulgarian nurses who had been sentenced to death by a Libyan court for infecting children with AIDS.

'France liberated them,' Sarkozy said. 'I demanded it and I obtained it.'

He also noted that he was the only French president to openly demand, at a press conference in Beijing, that China outlaw the death penalty.

Sarkozy noted that Gaddafi would sign contracts later Monday totaling 'about 10 billion euros.' These deals would involve a nuclear reactor for a seawater desalinization plant, a variety of armaments and other economic contracts, the French president said.