Sarkozy accused of hypocrisy as his wife meets the Dalai Lama - by John Lichfield
The French First Lady, Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, will meet the Dalai Lama in France this week – adopting for the first time her self-proclaimed role as a kind of queen of human rights. Officially, Mme Bruni-Sarkozy will meet the Buddhist spiritual leader as a man of faith, not as as a symbol of Tibetan resistance to Chinese rule. In truth, her role will be more ambiguous and more political, deflecting criticism from her husband, President Nicolas Sarkozy, who announced last week that he would not "provoke" the Chinese government by meeting the Dalai Lama while the Olympic Games were in progress in Beijing.
The French media have, almost universally, interpreted the deployment of the First Lady to greet the Tibetan leader as a clumsy attempt to combine realpolitik and principle.
The centre-left newspaper Libération said: "To human rights activists [the President] is saying 'Carla'. To the Chinese, he is saying: "here I come'." The first secretary of the Socialist Party, François Hollande, said: "Nicolas Sarkozy has already won the gold medal for hypocrisy." Elysée officials said that the decision was made at the suggestion of the Dalai Lama himself, who advised Paris that it was "better not to annoy the Chinese during the Olympics".
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