VZCZCXRO6621
PP RUEHDBU RUEHFL RUEHKW RUEHLA RUEHMR RUEHPA RUEHRN RUEHROV RUEHSR
DE RUEHFR #0847/01 0650836
ZNY CCCCC ZZH
P 060836Z MAR 07
FM AMEMBASSY PARIS
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC PRIORITY 5375
INFO RUEHZO/AFRICAN UNION COLLECTIVE PRIORITY
RUCNFUR/DARFUR COLLECTIVE PRIORITY
RUEHZL/EUROPEAN POLITICAL COLLECTIVE PRIORITY
RUEHGG/UN SECURITY COUNCIL COLLECTIVE PRIORITY
RUEHEG/AMEMBASSY CAIRO PRIORITY 0945
RUEHKO/AMEMBASSY TOKYO PRIORITY 2458

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 04 PARIS 000847 
 
SIPDIS 
 
SIPDIS 
 
E.O. 12958: DECL: 03/05/2016 
TAGS: PREL PHUM PINR KSUM XA FR
SUBJECT: PART I: AFRICA-FRANCE SUMMIT - CEREMONY OVER 
SUBSTANCE 
 
REF: A. PARIS 688 B. PARIS 777 
 
Classified By: Political Minister Counselor Josiah B. Rosenblatt.  Reas 
ons 1.4b,d 
 
¶1. (C) Summary and Comment: The XXIV Africa-France Summit in 
Cannes was an anodyne event that took place without 
pyrotechnics under the banner of "Africa and World 
Equilibrium."  Turn-out, with 34 African heads of state in 
attendance, was below the peak of the 2003 Paris Summit and 
failed to match the standard set at the 2006 Africa-China 
Summit in Beijing.  Chirac proclaimed that the goal of 
stability in Africa was inseparable from advancing democracy. 
 Eighteen African nations signed on to the UNITAID 
initiative.  In a GoF-staged side-meeting on Darfur, the 
heads of state for Sudan, Chad, and CAR renewed a pledge 
against fomenting cross-border rebellion; the GoF privately 
discounted the declaration's impact.  Cote d'Ivoire, the 
major sub-Saharan African crisis involving over 3,500 French 
peacekeepers, was kept at arms length.  A key Summit outcome, 
as seen from Chirac's Africa Cell, was French success in 
mitigating the fallout from the absence of President Mugabe 
of Zimbabwe.  More on the dynamics of the Sudan-Chad-CAR 
Mini-Summit and on how France tackled the Mugabe problem 
reported septel. 
 
¶2. (C) Summary and Comment C'td. Chirac, 74 years old and in 
the last months of his presidency, resisted the impression -- 
embraced by the press and African notables -- that the 15-16 
February gala represented his leave-taking from power and 
from the African continent.  Although without a specific 
political agenda in Cannes, Chirac did continue to promote 
signature multilateral issues:  his vision of a UN 
Environmental Organization and the international airticket 
solidarity levy at the core of UNITAID.  But apart from 
pull-asides, Chirac conducted only two formal bilateral 
meetings, one with African Union Chairman and Ghana President 
Kufuor, the other with Namibian President Pohamba, the only 
African on an "official" visit to France.  German Chancellor 
Merkel, in her capacity as EU President and G-8 Chair, set 
the stage for an Africa-EU event in 2007.  (The attendance of 
a former Japanese Prime Minister went largely unnoticed.)  In 
press remarks, Chirac lauded Chinese engagement in Africa as 
"positive" and "necessary."  Egypt, a relative newcomer to 
Africa-France Summits, was chosen to host the next event in 
¶2009.  End Summary and Comment. 
 
---------------------------- 
Africa and World Equilibrium 
---------------------------- 
 
¶3. (SBU) Jacques Chirac presided February 15-16 in Cannes at 
the XXIV Africa-France Summit.  The official theme for the 
Cannes Summit was "Africa and World Equilibrium."  There were 
panels on "Africa and Natural Resources," "The Place and 
Weight of Africa in the World," and "Africa and the 
Information Society."  The kernel of the event lay less in 
formal exchanges than in the ritual of reunion and the 
availability of ready pull-asides.  At 49 delegations, 
including 36 Heads of State (counting Chirac and EU 
President/G-8 Chair/German Chancellor Merkel), turn-out in 
Cannes bettered figures for the 2005 Summit in Mali (24 Heads 
of State) but failed to match the 2003 Summit in Paris, where 
France had mustered a record-high 43 leaders in an attempted 
show of diplomatic clout and opposition to military 
intervention in Iraq.  Cannes turn-out also came in below the 
11/2006 China-Africa Summit in Beijing, which gathered over 
40 leaders and seemed to mark a watershed event. The presence 
at Cannes of former Japanese Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori was 
a curiosity that likely reflected more Chirac's personal ties 
to Japan than coordination on African affairs (Ref A).  By 
contrast, high-level EU attendance, by EU President and 
German Chancellor Merkel as well as EC Commissioner for 
Development and Humanitarian Aid Michel --  stands out as a 
possible turning point for the future of the Africa-France 
Summit. 
 
-------------------------- 
Africans Missing in Action 
-------------------------- 
 
¶4. (C) Mugabe's absence and that of SADC members South 
Africa, Angola, Tanzania, and DRC will be discussed septel. 
Other absentees included the leaders of Cote d'Ivoire, 
Guinea, Rwanda, Kenya, Senegal, Tunisia, Libya, Morocco, and 
Eritrea.  The absences of Gbagbo, Kagame and Conte were 
 
PARIS 00000847  002 OF 004 
 
 
unsurprising.  The MFA offered no explanation for Kibaki's 
failure to show, except to note that Kenya rarely takes part 
and to deny any dust-up after Kenyan press allegations that 
Chirac's proposal for a UN Environmental Organization 
envisioned a first-world headquarters and would leave the 
Nairobi-based UN Environmental Program out in the cold. 
Commenting on February 21, Jacques Champagne de Labriolle, 
Deputy Counselor in Chirac's Africa Cell, explained that 
Wade, a staple participant at recent Africa-France Summits, 
stayed in Dakar to pull out the stops in his election 
campaign; failure to carry the election in the first round on 
February 25 would constitute a profound political humiliation 
in African terms, he said.  (Note: Wade nonetheless made a 
mark at the Summit by releasing a fawning farewell epistle to 
Chirac, which further reinforced the sense of the Summit as a 
grand farewell party.) 
 
¶5. (C) On Eritrea, Labriolle revealed that the GoF had 
rebuffed an offer by Afwerki to fly to Cannes for the 
side-bar on Darfur border issues, because the Eritrean leader 
declined otherwise to participate at the Africa-France 
Summit.  As to the Tunisian and Libyan leaders, Labriolle 
said they never take part in Africa-France Summits.  King 
Mohammed VI of Morocco publicly excused himself on account of 
his wife's advanced pregnancy, leaving Algerian President 
Bouteflika as the lead representative of the Maghreb.  While 
Labriolle hinted that Mohammed VI may be dealing with family 
tensions at home, Egyptian Embassy Counselor Heba Sidhom 
believed Mohammed VI wanted rather to avoid an awkward 
encounter with Bouteflika in the run-up to the roll-out of 
the next Moroccan plan for Western Sahara.  Chirac, in 
off-the-record remarks to select journalists, called Mohammed 
VI's absence the "greatest disappointment" of the Summit, we 
heard on February 24 from Stephen Smith, the Paris-based 
Africanist and co-author of the 2005 French bestseller, "How 
France Lost Africa." 
 
------------------------- 
An EU Tutorial on Africa? 
------------------------- 
 
¶7. (C) MFA AF PDAS-Equivalent Caroline Dumas commented on 
February 16 that the GoF had actively courted the presence of 
EU President Merkel and EC Commissioner Michel as part of a 
general strategy to lift EU awareness of African issues and 
buttress planning for a 2007 EU-Africa Summit.  This was not 
meant to prefigure, she said, doing away with the 
Africa-France format in favor of primarily EU-centered 
activities.  The GoF nonetheless believed the Africa-France 
Summit represented a valuable opportunity, even pedagogical 
vehicle, for EU partners to engage on Africa.  In similar 
comments, Labriolle declared that the GoF tries now to craft 
Africa-France Summit themes in broader and more topical 
terms, partly in order to reach a larger European public by 
targeting hot-button issues like immigration flows, the 
demand for natural resources, and the information society. 
Broadly speaking, the GoF needs wider European buy-in for 
active engagement in Africa -- often a harder sell, Dumas 
suggested, with the EU at 27 members and its center of 
gravity shifting eastward. 
 
¶8. (C)  Educating other Europeans about Africa will help 
France gain more bang for its euro at Brussels, we often 
hear.  Our MFA contacts frequently note that France channels 
a supposedly disproportionate chunk of its assistance through 
the EU.  Chirac, in press remarks in Cannes, highlighted how 
France contributes 16 percent of the EU budget and 25 percent 
of the European Development Fund (EDF).  We hear occasional 
MFA grumbling that the GoF does not get its money's worth, 
that it has diminishing control over how the EU apportions 
the kitty, and that France often has an uphill battle in 
arguing African priorities with many newer EU members.  The 
UK, which contributes less to the EDF, has an edge over 
France in terms of flexibility and even bilateral influence, 
the argument goes.  (Note: Overall, the MFA is quick to seek 
and extol the benefits and legitimacy brought by the EU to 
African policies, but there are pockets of ambivalence -- a 
reflection of France's own complex relationship with the EU. 
End Note.) 
 
¶9. (C) Thinking ahead to the Portuguese EU Presidency, 
Labriolle suggested an EU-Africa Summit would work better 
than an EU-AU Summit.  Building the meeting around the 
African Union would pose the problem of how to involve 
Morocco, which remains outside the AU Union due to that 
organization's recognition of the Polisario.  Labriolle's 
 
PARIS 00000847  003 OF 004 
 
 
more cutting criticism, however, regarded whether the AU 
warranted treatment as a full partner with the EU.  The 
weaknesses of the AU, already the cause of many 
disappointments, would become even more manifest once current 
AU Chairperson Alpha Oumar Konare and AU Peace and Security 
Commissioner Said Djinnit departed, Labriolle feared. 
 
------------------------------ 
Skirting the Question of China 
------------------------------ 
 
¶10. (C) The growing inroads of China into Africa now 
represent a commonplace theme for French journalism.  In 
remarks to the press, Chirac, taking care not to give offense 
even as celebrations of the Chinese New Year were going 
forward, praised Chinese engagement in Africa as "positive" 
and "necessary."  While Japan's presence was welcome at 
Cannes, there was nonetheless ambivalence about how to 
approach the role of China, let alone the possibility of 
Chinese participation.  Egyptian Embassy Counselor Heba 
Sidhom, who attended the Summit and participated in 
preparatory meetings, claimed that some Paris-based African 
ambassadors wanted a workshop on China in Africa, but Michel 
de Bonnecorse, Chirac's Africa Counselor, put the kabosh on 
their proposal.  By contrast, Japanese Embassy Africa Watcher 
Chie Kinumaki, who also took part at the Summit, told a 
somewhat different tale, maintaining that the GoF, once the 
Cannes Summit got under way, had sought to introduce 
discussion of China, but that African delegations had balked, 
noting the topic wasn't on the formal agenda as well as 
stating their preference that it not be added. 
 
-------------------- 
A Tradition Limps On 
-------------------- 
 
¶11. (C) The 2007 Africa-France Summit was neither fish now 
fowl.  A farewell for Chirac?  Closure for France-Afrique? A 
hand-over to the EU? Another family photo op?  The mood of 
uncertainty extended to questions about the very future of 
these biennial meetings.  Chirac, who has yet to renounce his 
interest in a third term at the Elysee, coyly declared that 
Cannes would not be his last Africa-France Summit.  The 
tradition of the Africa-France Summit, one assumes, will 
continue, at least for a time.  Mubarak copped the big brass 
ring -- the honor of hosting the 2009 version -- but the 
French MFA remains cagey about the long-term, waiting for 
guidance from the next French Presidency and confessing a 
certain weariness of the Summits, which are portrayed 
increasingly as matters of protocol rather than policy. 
Perhaps the Summits have outlived their day or just grown too 
large and lost their focus.  Anecdotal feedback from Cannes 
indicated largely ceremonial and pro forma encounters only. 
 
----------------------- 
Washing Up on the Nile? 
----------------------- 
 
¶12. (C) The move to an Egyptian venue represents a departure 
from the origins of the Summit.  In 1973, President Pompidou, 
supposedly at the behest of the President of Niger, first 
called together the hard-core of sub-Saharan Francophonie 
(and the Central African Franc Zone) at a meeting in Paris 
attended by only 6 African heads of state and 4 other 
delegations, all from former French colonies.  The 1976 Paris 
Summit saw the first participation by non-Francophone 
delegations.  The first appearance by a Head of State from a 
non-Francophone state -- Somalia -- occurred at the 1980 Nice 
Summit.  Egypt itself is a relative latecomer, taking part at 
ministerial level for the first time at the 1981 Paris Summit 
-- incidentally the first summit also to include an 
Anglophone African nation, Zimbabwe.  And Egypt first 
participated at the level of head of state at the 1998 Paris 
Summit.  Morocco, a former French protectorate (1912-1956), 
admittedly hosted the 1988 Casablanca Summit, the first such 
summit to take place outside either metropolitan France or 
sub-Saharan Africa, and an occasion for Gabonese President 
Bongo to lament the "dilution" of the Summits and their slide 
into soporific gabfests.  A 2009 Cairo Summit would appear a 
similar threshold event, shifting the center of gravity even 
further from its core sub-Saharan roots. 
 
-------------------------------------- 
Chirac:  A Leopard Changing His Spots? 
-------------------------------------- 
 
 
PARIS 00000847  004 OF 004 
 
 
¶13. (C) Chirac started his Presidency in 1995 by inviting 
back to the Elysee the octogenarian Jacques Foccart, 
"Monsieur Afrique" under de Gaulle and Pompidou, the master 
architect of the personal networks that defined French 
political and economic policy on the continent.  Foccart died 
in 1997, but Chirac continued the tradition of highly 
personal management of African affairs.  Before the Cannes 
Summit, the campaign headquarters of Socialist presidential 
candidate Segolene Royal released a diatribe denouncing 
Chirac for cynicism and chumminess with dictators and 
human-rights abusers.  The campaign quickly retracted the 
piece, which Royal had not personally approved, but perhaps 
also because French policies in Africa historically have a 
bit of the glass house about them and one should be careful 
when throwing rocks.  Still, such criticisms continue to 
percolate in a France that nowadays makes readier reference 
to the Rights of Man than to Raison d'Etat. 
 
¶14. (C) In Chirac's 2007 speech at Cannes, solidarity stood 
alongside stability as the twin pillars of French policy in 
Africa.  Yes, Chirac's France in 2007 will continue to abide 
by its defense agreements in Africa and stand vigil to 
preserve the territorial integrity of longstanding "clients" 
like Chad and the Central African Republic --  but with an 
inflection of EU resources, forces, and even "legitimacy", 
wherever possible.  Under the rubric of solidarity, Chirac 
advocated protection of the environment and assistance for 
the victims of HIV/AID, with UNITAID, the initiative launched 
by Chirac during the 2006 UNGA, a centerpiece at the Cannes 
Summit.  Chirac -- generally not considered a champion of the 
exportation of democracy, certainly not "multiparty" 
democracy, when other interests vie for priority -- went on 
record nonetheless that lasting stability in Africa can only 
be achieved with the advance of democracy, proper elections, 
good governance, and respect for human rights....  Foccart, 
the realpolitik bogeyman of historical French policy in 
Africa, must be turning in his grave. 
 
¶15. (C) The Royal camp's diatribe, while short-lived, tapped 
into a vein of self-doubt about the past and present of 
French African policy.  Those same misgivings underlie the 
token effort by NGOs like Oxfam, Greenpeace and Survie to 
stage a Counter-Summit in Paris to the Cannes France-Africa 
Summit.  In an indirect rebuke to Chirac, Sarkozy himself has 
promised a retreat, if elected, from the personality-based 
diplomacy that has long characterized GoF postures in Africa, 
proposing the need for a more institution-based approach, 
repudiating stability-obsessed realpolitik, and proclaiming 
that universal values -- human rights, religious freedom, and 
democracy -- are the foundations of good policy and 
inseparable from the true interests of France (Ref B).  Royal 
has even proposed abolishing the notorious "Africa Cell" at 
the Elysee. 
 
¶16. (C) Reformist impulses aside, Chirac's approaching 
departure from power begs the question of who, among his 
possible successors, could even dream of taking up his 
mantle.  Chirac has been glad-handing the leaders of Africa 
for decades.  No other Western leader can lay claim to a 
comparably broad and deep network of acquaintances and 
friendships there.  Once Chirac goes, France must inevitably 
approach Africa differently.  He leaves no true understudy 
for the role of "Monsieur Afrique";  PM Villepin, perhaps, 
aspired to the role, but his presidential ambitions have 
since foundered.  One has to wonder if Chirac's nod to good 
governance, his more democratic vocabulary, does not stem in 
part from an inkling that he represents the last in a certain 
line of French Africanists and from his prescience, as a 
canny politician, that it would be prudent to stake out a 
claim as a precursor of the emergent reformist generation. 
That said, there was no intrinsic boldness to Chirac's words, 
which could have been spoken by many Western leaders; only 
their contrast with Chirac's historic caricature within 
Africa lends them unique if transient interest. 
 
 
Please visit Paris' Classified Website at: 
http://www.state.sgov.gov/p/eur/paris/index.c fm 
 
STAPLETON