To all but one of the African leaders attending the opening ceremony of yesterday’s Franco-African summit in Paris, a jovial President Jacques Chirac proffered the regular Gallic greeting of a kiss on each cheek.
Robert Mugabe got a grim nod and a cursory handshake, as the French president kept courtesies to a minimum and went on to warn all his guests, including the Zimbabwean leader, that those who abused their power should no longer be able hide behind the immunity of office.
”Violence must be denounced wherever it comes from. Those who perpetrate it now risk punishment at the hands of the International Criminal Court, which extends its protection to all citizens worldwide,” Chirac said in his opening speech. ”The days of impunity, or when people were able to justify the use of force, are truly over.”
For the French president, whose quest for a weightier global role for France has brought him into open conflict with the US and with some of his European partners over Iraq, the summit is a moment to impress a parade of leaders from 52 African states with a bit of Gallic grandeur.
”Africa lies at the heart of France’s priorities,” Chirac said, adding that the summit should be the start of a ”new partnership” for France and Africa. He added that France was increasing development aid to Africa to help fight Aids, poverty, famine and violence.
”Chirac, Africa’s Godfather” was the double-edged verdict of the left-leaning Libération newspaper.
But some African critics found the tone altogether too much. ”The French are acting as if they were in another era,” said one west African delegate to the 22nd Franco-African summit.
Over at the sprawling glass-and-concrete Palais des Congres at Porte Maillot in western Paris, several hundred police cordoned off the many entrances to stop protesters from interrupting proceedings.
But once past the metal detectors and into the hushed corridors of the conference centre, there was precious little chance of finding out what was actually going on. The keynote speeches, such as Chirac’s and that of Kofi Annan, the UN secretary general, were carried on CCTV screens.
But the rest of the summit was ”informal”: in other words, a chance for leaders to hold bilateral and multilateral talks — in or out of the sight of the omnipresent Chirac — and to try to solve some serious regional problems, such as the crisis in Ivory Coast.
Across town, dozens of demonstrators tried to protest against Mugabe’s invitation. Peter Tatchell, the gay rights activist who on Wednesday filed a complaint aimed at getting Mugabe arrested for torture, was arrested with a fellow human rights campaigner before he had even emerged from the metro station.
Tatchell, who had planned to ambush the limousine bringing Mugabe to a lunch for summit delegates at the French foreign ministry, was detained in a nearby police station for more than an hour with Zimbabwean activist Alan Wilkinson.
A dozen journalists covering the would-be protest were also herded on to a pavement by CRS riot police and denied permission to leave until the ceremonial banquet, hosted by the prime minister, Jean-Pierre Raffarin, had finished two-and-a-half hours later.
”We were prepared to do anything peaceful that we could to shame and embarrass Mugabe,” Tatchell said after his release. ”But it feels like a police state here. The right to protest has effectively been suspended for the duration of this summit.”
Though Mugabe has stolen the headlines, human rights campaigners also criticised Chirac’s willingness to rub shoulders with some of the world’s other less scrupulous rulers.
The president’s reference yesterday to the new International Criminal Court, due to open this spring, was timely: two of its earliest cases could arise from Congo and the Central African Republic, both of whose leaders were among the men listening to Chirac speak.
But it was Chirac’s much-criticised personal invitation to Mugabe that most infuriated Britain, France’s historic rival for influence on the continent. The Zimbabwean president, accused of human rights abuses, has been theoretically banned from travelling to the EU since his disputed re-election a year ago.
”This will be marked out as the grubbiest handshake of the year,” the Conservative foreign affairs’ representative, Alan Duncan, said minutes after the two leaders shook hands in Paris.
”The thought of Mugabe gorging himself on French food tonight while his people starve is morally repugnant. By rolling out the red carpet for Mugabe, Jacques Chirac has placed himself firmly on the moral low ground.”
The British government was equally disapproving. ”We don’t think, and most of the rest of the world don’t think, that talking to Robert Mugabe right now or entertaining him in the way we expect him to be entertained in Paris is going to deliver better things,” a British official said.
Even Le Monde came down against the visit, saying Mugabe’s presence in France was ”an insult to the victims of his arbitrary reign”. – Guardian Unlimited Â