Sticking plaster to heal Olympic row

The French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, is to send not one, but two emissaries to Beijing this week in an attempt to heal the growing diplomatic squabble between China and France.

After the recent apparently non-orchestrated spontaneous anti-Western, and in particular anti-French demonstrations in China, Sarkozy seems to have decided that it’s time to bring a little calm into play.

Those demonstrations were against allegedly biased Western media coverage of the Chinese security clampdown in Tibet and in particular at the protests that took place in Paris at the beginning of this month as the Olympic torch made its way through the streets of the French capital.

Sarkozy has chosen a contrasting couple to do this country’s bidding in what for him is a somewhat unaccustomed mild-mannered counter attack.

Next weekend he’s sending his diplomatic advisor, Jean-David Levitte, to sweet talk the Chinese authorities. No great surprise on that front perhaps as Levitte is clearly the right man for the job. He’s a former French ambassador to the United Sates and a recognised “Sherpa” or personal representative of Sarkozy, responsible for preparing the president’s participation at international summits.

The other emissary however is something of a surprise. It’s the former prime minister and current vice president of Sarkozy’s ruling centre-right Union pour un Mouvement Populaire (Union for a Popular Movement, UMP) party, Jean-Pierre Raffarin, who will be arriving in China on Wednesday.

On first sight that decision isn’t so extraordinary, after all the two men belong to the same party and were in government together under Sarkozy’s predecessor, Jacques Chirac.

But Raffarin, while not exactly condemning the current president over the past year, has not held back in his criticism of Sarkozy’s personal style and some of his policies.

What’s more, Raffirin will also be delivering a letter from Chirac, apologising for his being unable to make a planned trip to China himself on medical grounds.

That should go down well with the authorities in Beijing, as Chirac remains immensely popular there. And it might bring an amused smile to the face of many commentators here in France who know how little love is lost between the former and present French presidents.

Further proof, if it were needed, of how canny a political operator the present incumbent can be when it suits him.

In fact the whole business of sending emissaries to China is something of an interesting departure for Sarkozy. If this had all happened a couple of months ago when he was still in his supersonic omnipresent presidential phase, he would more than likely have boarded the first Beijing-bound plane himself to try to sort out the problem.

This then is perhaps more evidence that the newly presidential Sarkozy is calmer, more measured and statesmanlike and actually allowing others to do the jobs for which he wasn’t elected.