A last chance?

The French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, has made a fresh appeal to the leader of Farc, the Colombian rebel movement, for the release of the hostage Ingrid Betancourt.

The French-Colombian, former senator has been held prisoner by the left-wing group since February 2002 when she was kidnapped while campaigning for the Colombian presidency.

It was last December in the full throes of his Bling Bling presidency that Sarkozy took the unusual step of making his first direct call to the Farc leader, Manuel Marulanda, in a taped radio and television message.

He took a fair amount of stick at the time as detractors viewed the move as just another attempted media coup as he launched himself on the international stage. In the end his hopes to have Betancourt released by Christmas came to nothing.

This time around though it was a different Sarkozy making his recorded appeal once again directly to Marulanda. He appeared both determined and impassioned in a speech that shows he seems quickly to have acquired some of the necessary presidential gravitas that was perhaps until now lacking.

In urging Marulanda to act immediately, Sarkozy said the Farc leader now had a rendezvous with history.

“Release Ingrid Betancourt and the other hostages who are in a weakened state,” Sarkozy implored.

“Don’t lose this chance that’s being presented. It would be a grave political mistake as well as a human tragedy. It would be a crime and you would be responsible for the death of a woman.”

Betancourt’s is thought to be in a weakened condition and her life in danger. She is reportedly suffering from Hepatitis B, has a tropical skin disease and has been on hunger strike since February 23 – the day that marked the anniversary of her sixth year in captivity.

A video released late last year showed her in a weak and gaunt state

But just as important as the content of Sarkozy’s latest appeal is the fact that he has backed it up with a thought-out plan.

He had already been in touch with his Columbian counterpart, Alvaro Uribe, and secured his agreement to suspend all military operations in the area where Betancourt is being held and allow a humanitarian mission to recover the 46-year-old once her exact whereabouts are known. A ‘plane with two French emissaries and Red Cross representatives is on standby in Paris just waiting for the green light.

In an attempt to get the whole process moving along, the French government last week also offered to take in Farc rebels released from prison in exchange for Betancourt’s liberation.

In his father's footsteps

It's hard not to jump to the conclusion that Jean, the 21-year-old second son of the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, is being groomed for success and higher political office.

He was a key player in the mess that quickly became a political soap opera during the local elections to find a mayor for the swish Parisian suburb of Neuilly-sur-Seine in March.

Now he has been rewarded, of sorts, with the job of bringing peace and calm to his father's ruling centre-right Union pour un Mouvement Populaire (Union for a Popular Movement, UMP) party in the town.

And that's exactly what's needed since the party attempted to rip itself apart in what has traditionally been one of its strongholds. Neully-sur-Seine has more than 4,000 registered party members - not bad going in a town with a population of just about 60,000. And it was for a long time the personal fiefdom of the current president, where he was mayor from 1983-2002.

The troubles started when Sarkozy Snr parachuted in his (now former) presidential spokesman, David Martinon, as the party's candidate for the mayoral vacancy that was up for grabs in March. But when it became clear that he would probably lose out to another independent centre-right contender, Jean-Christophe Fromantin, the local party led by Sarkozy Jnr and his father's long time number two in Neuilly, Arnaud Teullé, joined forces to effectively "sack" Martinon.

The UMP national executive then decided to throw its weight behind Fromantin, much to the disgust of Teullé who decided to run for office himself.

It was handbags at dawn stuff as centre-right met centre right in the second round run-off, with Sarkozy Snr remaining quiet as his mother Andrée and one of his closest political confidants, immigration minister Brice Hortefeux, both breaking party ranks to support the by now "dissident" Teullé. In the end, Fromantin beat Teullé, with 61,67% of the vote against 38,33%.

Enter stage left Sarkozy Jnr, who after his own election to the regional council of Haut-de-Seine (in which Neuilly is a canton) has now been asked to take on the responsibility of co-ordinating the UMP’s activities in Neuilly. That's a job that has been filled for the past 10 years by Teullé.

Commenting on his rapid promotion, Sarkozy Jnr pretty much stated the obvious that it wasn't a scoop that the election campaign had left its mark on the party, and he had been asked to "restore peace and serenity." Even Teullé was as gracious as could be in yet again being pushed to one side, claiming that he no longer wished to run the local UMP office because he had done so for the past 10 years.

"Jean Sarkozy is a friend," he said. "I see him often and wish him all the best in his new task." Of course Teullé's "dismissal" had nothing to do with the fact that at a national level the UMP had decided to back another candidate in the mayor's race.

Similarly local UMP party officials have been quick to deny that the next step for Sarkozy Jnr would be the mayor's office.

"We don't want to declare war on the candidate (Fromantin) we supported, maintained the party's local secretary, Jacques Gautier. "Jean represents the young generation and has a maturity that's hard to imagine in someone of his age."

So perhaps Sarkozy Jnr is a little more than the sticking plaster the party would like us to believe. At least he'll now have the time before the next elections to build up his power base and prove that he's worthy of the higher political office for which he is so obviously not being groomed.

Free but not innocent

The six members of the French charity, l'Arche de Zoé have been released from prison after they were granted a long-expected pardon by the Chadian president, Idriss Déby, on Monday.

They were convicted last December by a court in N'Djamena, the capital of the former French African colony, of trying to kidnap 103 children two months earlier and fly them to France (see related story "Rough justice" January 29, 2008).

Originally sentenced to eight years hard labour, the aid workers were later transferred to France to under a long-standing agreement between the two countries, to serve out their terms under French law.

The charity has always denied allegations of kidnapping and said it was acting in good faith in attempting to rescue the children; all of whom it claimed were orphans, from the Dafur region of Sudan. It intended to fly them to France where it had organised host families.

But United Nations investigations soon revealed that very few of the children were in fact orphans and most of them came from Chadian villages along the border with Sudan.

The case has been a source of constant polemic for months here in France and the reaction to the pardon and release of the aid workers has been mixed. Critics accuse the members of L'Arche de Zoé of being pseudo humanitarians who were working outside of the accepted and recognised international codes of practice. Their bogus operation is viewed by many as having discredited much of the work of established non-governmental organisations and aid agencies.

In spite of those accusations, the six retain a large network of support in France - a network, which maintained a high level of pressure on the French government to intervene on their behalf and secure the pardon and release once back on French soil. Their lawyers have denounced the trial in Chad as a "parody" of justice and insist the whole story still hasn't been told. In particular they want an investigation into the role of the Chadian authorities and how an apparent blind eye was turned to the charity's activities for as long as it suited.

The reputation of neither government comes away from the whole affair entirely unblemished. The French foreign ministry apparently knew of the charity's activities in Chad but had failed to stop it from breaking international law. Meanwhile the delay in granting the pardon - one month after an attempted rebellion in Chad - is being interpreted as a face-saving move to prevent any association being made between French military assistance and support for Déby's regime.

France is one of Chad's principle allies and has 1,100 troops deployed permanently in the country.

Although some might see it as a happy end to a miserable affair, the story is far from over.

The Chadian government has not dropped its demand for €6 million in compensation for the families of the children. And the wheels of the French justice system still have to finish grinding, with the six facing charges under French law, punishable by a maximum of 10 years imprisonment and fines of €75,000 each.

A Sudanese man, Souleïmane Ibrahim Adam, who acted as an intermediary and was also tried and convicted has not been pardoned and remains in prison in Chad.