Recent weeks have seen intense interest displayed in the English-language media to signs of a potential reorientation of French foreign policy under new President Nicolas Sarkozy. Following the publication earlier this month of former French Foreign Minister Hubert Védrine’s report to the President on France and “Globalization” — which, as the extensive extracts published on World Politics Review show, was largely misinterpreted by the media as a plea for change — some seemingly improvised remarks by current French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner gave renewed impetus to such discussions. During an hour-long interview on the French talk show “Grand Jury” on [...]
Since taking office, French President Nicolas Sarkozy has articulated a new paradigm to structure Western engagement with Africa. This paradigm dispels the idea that Africa is a sick and helpless continent for the West to rescue and instead calls for robust European-African partnerships to manage Africa’s genuine challenges of violence, poverty, and corruption. True to his reputation as a man of action, Sarkozy has already transformed these ideas into practical policies, and the result has been a flurry of promising and innovative diplomatic initiatives concerning Africa over the past two months, especially vis-à-vis the ongoing tragedy in Darfur. If one [...]
CAMBODIA CHARGES SENIOR KHMER ROUGE OFFICIAL — Cambodian authorities have arrested the Khmer Rouge’s ideological chief, Nuon Chea, to answer charges at a United Nations-backed tribunal that he planned and helped execute the murders of up to 1.7 million people. Chea, the most senior surviving member of Pol Pot’s murderous regime, was arrested Sept. 19 and charged with war crimes and crimes against humanity. The move comes less than two months after the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) issued formal charges on July 31 against Kaing Guek Eav (better known by his alias, Duch) who ran S-21, [...]
