in the midst of the pomp and ceremony which accompanied the launching of the Union for the Mediterranean in Paris on Sunday there were two leaders in particular who were basking in the media limelight.
The first was French President Nicholas Sarkozy, the architect of the capricious project to create a grand alliance of nations along the Mediterranean basin, who played host to leaders and representatives of 43 countries from Europe, the Middle East and North Africa.
His grand vision of building bridges of peace and development between the European north and the mainly Arab south, including Israel and Turkey, has had its critics, but the skeptics have accepted to go along, at least for now, in the hope that some good may actually come out of the latest Sarkozy adventure. The other leader who had his day in Paris was Syria’s Bashar Assad, who is already indebted to the French president for ending the diplomatic siege which was forced on him by Sarkozy’s predecessor, Jacques Chirac, and the US administration in the aftermath of Rafik Hariri’s assassination in Beirut more than three years ago.
In the short term Sarkozy’s political fortunes will prove to be enormous. As current president of the EU and the newly established Union for the Mediterranean he is in a position to redefine France’s role, and his, both regionally and internationally.
His timing is impeccable. He has just returned from a trip to the Middle East where he delivered a speech at the Israeli Knesset that was, in contrast to the one made by US President George W. Bush few weeks earlier, considered balanced, fair and courageous.
At a time when US influence in the Middle East is receding and Washington’s diplomatic overtures are hitting a dead end, Sarkozy is moving quickly to fill a strategic void. Until a new American president is elected, the French leader can expect little resistance. For the Arabs the French involvement is a welcome change, for Israel it is an inevitable development that they can do little to stop.
In Paris this week Sarkozy relished his role as mediator, peacemaker and visionary statesman. He brought PNA’s Mahmoud Abbas and Israel’s Ehud Olmert together, egging them to continue the difficult path of negotiations and promising to return to the region to make one last push for an historic agreement.
With President Bashar he has responded positively to calls to play a role in ongoing indirect negotiations between Israel and Syria, sponsored until now by Turkey. The recent thaw in French-Syrian relations has reflected positively on Lebanon, where a new government was just formed as part of the Doha accord. As a gesture of gratitude to Sarkozy, Bashar announced while in Paris that he has no objection to establishing full diplomatic ties between his country and Lebanon, an important concession which was welcomed even by Washington.
So as Sarkozy enjoys the immediate gains of his one-day Mediterranean summit, the skeptics wait for the euphoria to end before raising tough questions about the future of the new union. Aside from home-grown European critics, Sarkozy will have to face opponents from across the Atlantic and elsewhere. The media and veteran politicians could not help but point to the ghost of the Barcelona Process of 1995, launched then under the title of the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership which also embraced grand and lofty ideals and goals.
That partnership was finally untied mainly because of the failure of the Middle East peace process and American adventurism in the region. In contrast, the challenges facing the new union remain the same, some have been compounded. They include illegal migration from the south, energy, water, the Middle East conflict, trade barriers, the flow of investments from the north, terrorism and Islamophobia in Europe.
Sarkozy, who has been accused of not following on his grand schemes and of losing interest prematurely, will have to think ahead if he wants his latest venture to carry on. It all boils down to money, lots of it, and commitment from all those involved. The new union will need institutions, mechanisms and more importantly a clear vision.
Of course the new union will soon hit its first hurdle. The Arab-Israeli conflict will continue to haunt any regional effort as we have seen in the past. The occupation of Iraq, the crisis with Iran and the economic problems of the southern Mediterranean countries will add pressure and will require some ad hoc interventions.
It is too soon to pronounce judgments on Sarkozy’s new Club Med. The fact that cultural, political and economic interests between the underdeveloped south and the affluent north need to be addressed now more than ever cannot be denied. Already Europe and the Arab world have so many touch points and historically the relationship has had more downs than ups.
If Sarkozy’s scheme can help bridge gaps and avert future conflicts then it is an idea whose time has come. The Arabs, the other side of the coin, must rise to the challenge and become an active partner in this affair. Otherwise they will miss yet another opportunity to move from the current state of helplessness and despair.
