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Sarkozy to
arrive for three-day visit
French President Nicolas Sarkozy will arrive on Sunday for a
three-day visit, and will meet the next day with the parents of kidnapped IDF
Cpl. Gilad Schalit, Noam and Aviva. Gilad Schalit also has French citizenship.
The trip will be Sarkozy's first to Israel and the
Palestinian territories since he became president in May 2007. Accompanying him
will be his wife, 40-year-old model-turned-singer Carla Bruni, a number of
cabinet ministers and about 100 French business leaders.
In addition to meetings with Prime Minister Ehud Olmert,
President Shimon Peres and opposition head Binyamin Netanyahu, Sarkozy will
address the Knesset and accompany Peres on a helicopter tour of the Dead Sea,
Masada and Ein Gedi. Peres and Sarkozy are scheduled to officially launch the
Peace Valley project, the brainchild of the Israeli president, which includes
the Red Sea-Dead Sea initiative to be partly financed by France.
Sarkozy is considered the most pro-Israel French president
since the founding of the Fifth Republic in 1958.
Olmert has termed Sarkozy "a true friend of
Israel," describing Franco-Israeli relations since Sarkozy became
president as "not just a honeymoon but a true love story."
Sarkozy's visit is designed to coincide with the state's
60th anniversary, but it takes on added significance coming just over a week
before France assumes the rotating European Union presidency from Slovenia.
Bilateral ties have flourished over the last year and the
tension that characterized ties between Paris and Jerusalem during recent years
has been replaced by a positive atmosphere.
Sarkozy's mother, Andree Mallah, is of Greek-Jewish and
French-Catholic descent, and his son Jean was recently engaged to the daughter
of a prominent French-Jewish businessman.
Sunday's visit is the first by a French president since
Jacques Chirac came in 1996. That visit is remembered for the fracas during
Chirac's visit to Jerusalem's Old City and his public criticism of Israeli
security measures.
One of the main initiatives during France's six-month EU
presidency is set to involve Sarkozy's proposal for a Mediterranean Union to
enhance the "existing Barcelona Process and step up cooperation between
the European Union and the southern basin Mediterranean states."
While Israel supports the initiative, many Arab states have
expressed reservations, fearing that regional cooperation would amount to
normalizing ties with the Jewish state before peace between Israel and the Palestinians.
France will host a meeting of leaders of the EU and southern
and eastern Mediterranean countries in Paris on July 13.
Speaking at a news conference in Brussels on Friday, Sarkozy
said a meeting between the leaders of Israel and Syria at the Paris gathering
would represent "formidable progress."
Sarkozy's aides have said Olmert and Syrian President Bashar
Assad could meet at the Mediterranean summit. Neither leader has confirmed
plans for such a meeting. Sarkozy said he had taken note of Defense Minister
Ehud Barak's suggestion that the two leaders meet.
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