President Jacques Chirac, who arrived in Libya on Wednesday on the first visit by a French head of state, expressed the desire for a ”true partnership” with Tripoli after years of ”heavy turbulence”.
Speaking to about 200 people at the residence of the French ambassador, Chirac said he wished to ”rebuild a strong dialogue and to establish a true partnership” with Libya, after years in which the North African country had supported terrorism.
Chirac said his trip ”recognised the road traveled by Libya in the course of recent years. Equally, it demonstrates the joint wish of our two countries to turn toward the future.”
The French president arrived on Wednesday on a 24-hour trip that also gives France the chance to stake a claim for lucrative business contracts that should follow Moammar Gaddafi’s promise to liberalise the oil-rich country’s heavily controlled economy.
French flags were draped in the streets of Tripoli to welcome Chirac, accompanied by three ministers and a delegation of business leaders.
Gaddafi, who came to power in a 1969 coup, has undergone a spectacular diplomatic reversal since last year. This came after he agreed to stop developing weapons of mass destruction, denounced terrorism and acknowledged responsibility for the Lockerbie and UTA plane bombings in the 1980s.
Evoking those bombings, and a 1986 Libyan attack on a West Berlin nightclub, Chirac said those affairs had now ”come to an end, after a great deal of work and perseverance, and respect for the memories of the victims”.
In January, relations with France were rekindled after a foundation run by Gaddafi’s son, Saif al-Islam, agreed to pay $170-million in compensation to the families of victims of the 1989 attack on the French UTA flight over North Africa, in which 170 people died.
Chirac said that since Gaddafi took power, relations with Libya had undergone ”heavy turbulence. This difficult period is now happily completed”.
He said progress made so far ”is promising. We must now consolidate it and move forward.”
Chirac’s spokesperson Jerome Bonnafont said after both leaders met that France was ready to help Libya develop a civilian nuclear programme under strict international control.
Gaddafi said that since Libya had given up on weapons of mass destruction ”it wants technology transfers to allow it to develop its civilian industry by peaceful means,” Bonnafont said, adding that Gaddafi was ”thinking about civilian nuclear” power.
Chirac for his part said that ”France was open to technology transfers to those who respect the standards of international law, and notably [nuclear] non-proliferation,” according to Bonnafont.
While in Libya, Chirac was to hold talks with Gaddafi on Iraq, Africa, terrorism and economic cooperation.
The fate of five Bulgarians sentenced to death for causing an outbreak of Aids will also be raised.
But talks on France’s role in Africa may be tense, after Gaddafi said in remarks published on Wednesday that he had ”never understood the reasons for France’s military presence in Africa”, adding that the recent French intervention in Côte d’Ivoire was a mistake.
The comments came in an interview with Le Figaro newspaper in which Gaddafi said France and Libya should work together to bring progress to Africa.
”President Chirac has taken some very positive positions on Palestine and the Iraq war. And as France feels its presence in Africa is a kind of obligation and as Libya is an important African country … our two countries can combine their efforts to help
Africa,” he said.
In the early 1980s French and Libyan forces clashed in the civil war in Libya’s neighbour Chad.
In his remarks, Chirac said France hoped to embark on a ”deep and trusting political dialogue” with Tripoli on the Magrheb, the Mediterranean and Africa.
He added that France would support the ”reform movement and the opening up of businesses” in Libya to the outside world.
He added that France affirmed its ”economic involvement in the country” and plans to increase its presence in such ”strategic sectors as energy, infrastructure, telecommunications, transport, water and environment”.
Chirac will spend Wednesday night in Tripoli before flying to Ouagadougou in Burkina Faso for the biennial summit of French-speaking nations.
French businesses are keen to get access to contracts in the Libyan oil industry, as well as in aviation, banking, electricity, sanitation and tourism.
On Monday, the two countries ironed out one of the last hurdles to increased investment, with an agreement for the payment of more than 40-million euros in arrears owed by Libyan companies to France’s export credit guarantee agency Coface.
French Foreign Trade Minister Francois Loos, who is accompanying Chirac along with Foreign Minister Michel Barnier and Transport Minister Gilles de Robien, also signed with his Libyan counterpart, Mohammed Ali al-Huwej, a double-taxation protocol in Paris.
France is Libya’s fifth-largest supplier, with exports of 272-million euros last year, most linked to major public works contracts. French imports from Libya were worth 756-million euros in 2003 and consisted almost entirely of oil.
The Chirac visit follows meetings this year between Gaddafi and other European leaders including British Prime Minister Tony Blair, German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, all likewise bent on encouraging Libya’s rehabilitation and pitching for economic favours. – Sapa-AFP