On the 10th of this month, France received Libyan President Moammar Qaddafi in a step representing the pinnacle of President Sarkozy's "realpolitik, which was preceded by his famous visit to Libya when he settled the Bulgarian nurses' crisis. Although it's widely known that Qaddafi's visit was harshly criticized by the major political forces on both the right and the left, in the end, the visit still took place and deals worth 10 billion euros were signed, according to French official sources. Sarkozy can be proud of what he has achieved in terms of boosting France's economy and industry. But everything comes at a price, and the price that France has paid and continues to pay in return for this immense deal is not restricted to the settlement of the Bulgarian nurses' crisis or in opening more doors for Qaddafi to overcome his international isolation, but is most importantly the distortion of France's image. The move has shown France's ugly face: its hypocrisy and double standards which have made it lose credibility in much of the Arab world. Any Arab intellectual, or indeed, any Arab citizen with a live conscience, who knows about the regime headed by Colonel Qaddafi since the end of 1969, knows full well the destruction to which this country has been subjected on all fronts, whether economically, socially, culturally or politically. He would know the true nature of the brutal "democracy of a political regime which has murdered hundreds of citizens in Libyan prisons and was responsible for the death or disappearance of many public figures from Imam Moussa Al Sadr to Mansour Al Kikhia. Major international cases in which the Libyan regime was implicated, like Lockerby and France's UTA airplane bombing, are no secret. There is no need now to get into the nitty-gritty details of the long inventory of tragic cases the whole world has heard of. The way France has been behaving under Sarkozy's leadership - which seems to reflect a complete strategic direction not merely a temporary policy - totally contradicts France's stereotypical image in the minds of both the Egyptian and Arab elite and the majority public opinion in the region. The paragon of freedom and democracy embodied in the French Revolution's principals of liberty, equality and fraternity and the sublime thought of great liberal and enlightenment philosophers like Jean Jacques Rousseau, Montesquieu and others which had have entrenched human rights culture in contemporary life. It's a difficult and painful lesson but a very realistic one at the same time: Sarkozy's France has nothing to do with the France which we used to know and which sadly continues to linger in our memories. From now on all of us in Egypt and the Arab world who believe in freedom and liberalism must learn to deal with the true and realistic face of Sarkozy's France no matter how ugly it is, because its consequences vis-à-vis the Muslim and Arab world are much more complex than they appear to be at first glance. Dr. Osama Al-Ghazaly Harb is first deputy of the Democratic Front Party.
