By Matthew Russell Lee
UNITED NATIONS, February 16, updated twice -- As France tries at the UN to pitch the upcoming G-20, there is more than a little grumbling, met by a lack of transparency.
Amid news of French ministers accepting vacations and transportation from dictators and their associates, French diplomats descend on the UN General Assembly and its president seeking, they say, the “legitimacy of the G-192” and of democracy.
Last week in the UN's North Lawn building, France's Permanent Representative Gerard Araud emerged from meeting with GA President Joseph Deiss of Switzerland, only to make snarky jokes to a Swiss diplomat sitting in the relocated Vienna cafe.
Araud not having had a Press availability in months, Inner City Press sent questions about the meeting to the spokesman for PGA Deiss, as well as to the French Mission to the UN's spokesmen.
PGA spokesman Jean Victor Nkolo replied that “The topic PGA Deiss discussed with the Permanent Representative of France to the UN was global governance and the French presidency of the G20, in the context of the coming informal plenary of the GA with French Minister Le Maire.”
The French Mission replied curtly that “As for the meeting with PGA Deiss, Ambassador Araud and him discussed global governance reform in the framework of the French presidency of the G20.”
In fact, the Swiss have complained about France not inviting them to the G-20, while inviting among other non-members Ethiopia and Equatorial Guinea -- some jokes, could a junket in Malabo be far behind?
PGA Deiss -- whose housing in New York is paid for by the Swiss government -- has complained about the illegitimacy of the G-20. But he by far the only one, and French Minister Le Maire's pitch on February 17, believed to focus on the rising prices of agricultural commodities, seems unlikely to give the legitimacy Nicolas Sarkozy says he wants. (Click here for a previous Inner City Press report on a Sarkozy visit to the UN, complete with press conference limited to reporters with French passports.)
While dismissed as unrelated to the G-20, Sarkozy and his ministers including Chrisine Lagarde are loudly beating the drum for Florence Cassez, convicted of kidnapping in Mexico. (Ms. Lagarde says she will bring up l'affaire Cassez at the upcoming meeting of G-20 finance ministers). France derides the Mexican legal system and ask that Ms. Cassez be sent back to Paris to serve out her sentence.
But what ever happened to the those returned from Chad to France from L'Arche de Zoe, also accused of kidnapping? The French Mission does not make it easy to get answers, even for Francophone non-French.
Why did France abstain from the Security Council's Iraq resolution -- most say “BNP” -- and what will happen next? What is France's thinking of deferring the International Criminal Court's prosecution of Sudan's Omar al Bashir?
And, as relates to “its” G-20, how will France pass the G-20 torch to Mexico 2012, while so deriding its legal system? Watch this site.
Update of 6:10 pm -- the French Mission has responded that while the l'Arche de Zoe staff were returned to France in December 2007, their sentences of hard labor being converted to imprisonment, on March 2008 Idriss Deby of Chad granted pardons and they were released.
Inner City Press asked, and asks, where are they now? But answers are appreciated - including by Mr. Le Maire about the G-20. Watch this site.
