Press review 14 July 2008

by Michael Fitzpatrick

Article published on the 2008-07-14 Latest update 2008-07-14 06:39 TU

Just three papers to hand this national holiday here in France and two stories dominate the front pages.
 
Le Monde and Le Figaro both give pride of place to French President Sarkozy's Mediterranean Union. Libération looks forward to today's traditional 14 July military parade here in Paris, suggesting that the soldiers who'll march past Sarko and the assembled Mediterranean heads of state are not in step with a president currently busy cutting 54,000 defence posts.
 
Le Figaro is enthusiastic about French efforts to get the folk who live around the Mediterranean to put an end to five millennia of war, mayhem and murder, and start being nice to one another. It's an original idea. But will it work?
 
The government paper has already decided the whole thing is going to be a roaring success, with a banner headline proclaiming "Paris, peace capital" over a photograph of Sarkozy standing between Syria's Bashar al-Assad and Lebanon's Michel Sleiman. Assad looks surprised to have been invited at all; Sleiman looks as if the prawn cocktail at lunch didn't agree with him. Sarko is like a schoolboy on the first day of the summer holidays. It's easy to be sceptical, of course. Le Figaro reports a Syrian promise to open an embassy in Beirut, which is better than an army barracks or a refugee camp, and may be a step in the right direction. And according to the right-wing paper there have also been informal talks between the Israelis and the Syrians, who managed to sit at the same table for the first time in sixty years.
 
Le Monde looks at the project from south of the Med and wonders if it won't just turn out to be another very costly public relations exercise. Worse, some African commentators feel it might just be a way of helping Europe keep African illegal immigrants at bay. Time will tell.
 
 
The French army are not a happy bunch of chappies this national holiday. Not only will they have to march past a number of world-renowned dictators in the seats of honour at today's Paris parade, they will also have to salute the president who was rude about their professionalism after the accidental shooting of civilians during a recent exercise in Carcassonne. The same president plans to reduce the size of the French military machine by about one-fifth by the year 2015.
 
Interestingly, 88 per cent of the French have a very high opinion of the nation's armed forces. That's a lot more than poor old Nick Sarkozy can claim. Maybe we should keep the army and get rid of the president?
 
 
Finally, in case you're thinking of stealing a bit of firewood to help make ends meet given the high price of heating oil, a cautionary tale from today's Libération. A French farmer who was the victim of a spot of theft last winter simply drilled a few holes in some of his logs, filled them with gunpowder, sealed them up and put them back on the pile. The identity of the thief very quickly became evident, and the farmer hasn't lost a log since.