Sarkozy accused of hypocrisy as his wife meets the Dalai Lama

By John Lichfield in Paris
Sunday, 10 August 2008

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.

Although French first ladies are frequently deployed to greet visiting
cultural or spiritual dignitaries, the Bruni-Dalai meeting has taken on
unusual international, and domestic, political significance. Left-wing
opposition leaders in France have accused President Sarkozy of "muddling
genres" by using his wife as a political shield in this way, soon after
attending the Olympics opening ceremony. 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".

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 meeting may, however, also point to an expanding role for Mme Bruni-
Sarkozy on human rights issues. Questions are being asked in France
about her influence behind the scenes in a controversy over the proposed
extradition to Italy of a convicted Italian leftist terrorist, Marina
Petrella, who has lived in France for 15 years.

Mme Bruni-Sarkozy has said that she would like to use her role as First
Lady to advance humanitarian causes. Since her marriage, she has, in
fact, been relatively inactive as First Lady. In recent weeks, however,
there have been signs that Mme Bruni-Sarkozy, who claimed to be a "gut
left-winger", may be beginning to influence her radical-conservative
husband on human rights questions.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/sarkozy-accused-of-
hypocrisy-as-his-wife-meets-the-dalai-lama-889771.html