Sleeping With Wolves: Kagame Beware of Your New "Friend" Sarkozy

Sarkozy, who just finished destroying Libya; now welcomes man implicated in Rwanda genocide to Paris for State visit

[Black Star News Editorial]

Remember Sarkozy Entertained Quathafi in Paris in 2007

The world is a funny place.

France’s Nicolas Sarkozy just completed a decent job of destroying billions of dollars in buildings and infrastructure Muammar al-Quathafi had built with Libya’s vast oil wealth over a 42 year period.

Perhaps French companies will get most of the reconstruction contracts; interesting strategy by Sarkozy.

Sarkozy accomplished the destruction when France, the U.K., and U.S. abused United Nations Security Council Resolution 1973 and 1970, which were meant to permit intervention to protect civilians from the civil war. Resolution 1970 explicitly barred arms shipments to Libya; France violated it by air dropping weapons to Western Libya.

Sarkzoy, with President Barack Obama and Prime Minister David Cameron going along, through NATO, unleashed 24×7 bombardment for six months, to “protect” Libya’s civilians.

NATO and the United Nations have yet to even offer a tally of how many civilians were killed by the bombardments while NATO was trying to “save” civilians, and how much damage to properties and infrastructure was caused.

In the Libyan city of Zlitan alone, a reported 85 civilians, including children were killed. NATO showed concern for Libyan civilians in a most curious manner.

U.S. Congressman Dennis Kucinich has written a letter to the International Criminal Court (ICC) demanding that the court investigate NATO commanders on possible war crimes charges in connection with the bombardment campaign. Obviously, the major corporate media outlets will not report on any of this, thereby exonerating NATO of possible crimes.

NATO also stood by when the “rebels” committed ethnic cleansing of Black Libyans. The Wall Street Journal was the only corporate newspaper that defied the conspiracy of silence and reported on the massacres, although in relatively sedated language, on June 21 and on September 13. Ethnic cleansing is a crime against humanity and a war crime in the context of civil war.

The State Department and White House have yet to issue statements condemning the ethnic cleansing of Black people in Libya.

Yet, the corporate media outlets were all over the now-discredited allegations of Viagra-induced mass rapes story once pedalled by the erratic ICC prosecutor, the publicity hound Luis Moreno Ocampo. Notice CNN and The New York Times aren’t reporting on the Viagra-rapes anymore?

So why is the world a funny place?

The same Sarkozy, who just finished “saving” Libyan civilians by bombarding the country for six months, has just welcomed President Paul Kagame, a man implicated in the Rwanda genocide, in Paris, for a three-day state visit. Notwithstanding that a French judge, Jean-Louis Bruguiere, had called for the trial of Kagame and other top Rwanda government officials on allegations of downing the presidential plane carrying the presidents of Rwanda and Burundi in 1994. Those assassinations sparked the mass and unabated killings that followed in Rwanda.

In Rwanda for daring to say that all victims of the genocide –Hutus and Tutsis– should be mourned, and for attempting to contest the presidency in Rwanda, Victoire Ingabire, is now behind bars, awaiting trial. In the run-up to the same elections, André Kagwa Rwisereka, leader of the opposition Green Party was found dead; decapitated.

The retaliation doesn’t stop in Rwanda. Earlier this year, U.K. police warned two dissidents that the Rwanda government was plotting to assassinate them in London, according to a British media report.

Sarkozy has no problem with any of this of course.

Kagame’s visit to Paris comes at a time when former French president Jacques Chirac and other officials are being tried for coruption. A former Chirac official and current official in Sarkozy’s government was quoted in media reports today claiming that he funneled millions of dollars to Chirac from current and former presidents, to purchase influence and to finance elections in France.

French presidential elections loom next year. Now that al-Quathafi is not in a position to finance Sarkozy’s campaign –as the Libyans contend they did– perhaps Sarkzoy is desperately looking for new friends in Africa?

Sarkozy also has a curious way of treating new friends. The same Sarkozy in 2007 welcomed and regaled al-Quathafi in Paris during a five-day State visit.

At that time The New York Times reported that: “The visit to Paris was Mr. Sarkozy’s reward to Colonel Qaddafi for his orchestration of the release last July of Bulgarian medical workers and a Palestinian doctor who had been convicted of deliberately infecting children with the virus that causes AIDS. That gesture removed a major irritant in the relationship between France and Libya, opening the way for improved political ties — and billions of dollars in trade.”

Apparently al-Quathafi was doing something right at the time, and Sarkozy was quoted saying, “If we don’t welcome countries that are starting to take the path of respectability, what can we say to those that leave that path?”

The anticipated deals, including France building a nuclear reactor for energy for Libya, never materialized: it’s believed that’s what provoked Sarkozy’s hostility and determination to oust and kill al-Quathafi.


“Speaking Truth To Empower.”

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