PART I: AFRICA-FRANCE SUMMIT - CEREMONY OVER

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