Gadaffi Visit Leaves Sarkozy at Bay

The following correction was printed in the Observer's For the record column, Sunday December 30 2007 While Col Muammar Gadaffi revels in the titles 'Guide of the First of September Great Revolution of the Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya' and 'Brotherly Leader and Guide of the Revolution', he is not actually President of Libya, as we mistakenly described him in the article below. This has been corrected.

France breathed a collective sigh of relief yesterday as Muammar Gadaffi ended a colorful six-day state visit that was meant to herald his return to international respectability.

The flamboyant leader left President Nicolas Sarkozy skulking under a dark cloud whose silver lining - sales of arms and planes to Libya - failed to outshine cross-party moral concerns.

Amid an internal party revolt, right-wing MP Lionnel Luca raised questions about the cost of the visit, during which up to 300 police and security staff were used to protect Gadaffi's 400-strong delegation, which included his troop of beautiful virgin female guards.

Former Socialist presidential candidate Segolene Royal joined other critics branding the visit a disgrace, saying Sarkozy had been 'trapped by an unscrupulous dictator'. Even Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner denounced Gadaffi's 'pitiful' pronouncements on human rights after Gadaffi said there was nothing France could teach his country on the subject.

Sarkozy's closest aide, Elysee Palace secretary-general Claude Gueant, said the visit had produced sales of fighter aircraft and Airbuses worth €10bn, 'which means 30,000 jobs in France'.

But the figure was later revised to €3bn and officials admitted that it was mainly 'memorandums of intent to negotiate' that had been signed. They included the sale of 14 Rafales, an aging fighter jet. Discussions were also held over the sale of 10 Tiger attack helicopters, six corvettes and a nuclear reactor to power a water-treatment plant.

French trade with Libya lags far behind Britain's, and to Sarkozy the former pariah state is a linchpin in his plan for a 'Mediterranean Union' to defuse tension with Muslim countries.

The security-obsessed Libyan leader's every whim was satisfied during the visit. Gadaffi pitched a Bedouin tent in the garden of the residence where he stayed. At Versailles he posed with a replica of Sun King Louis XIV's throne before going on a pheasant shoot in the Rambouillet royal wood.

Gadaffi also took a boat trip down the Seine, after insisting that all the capital's bridges be closed to traffic and pedestrians. On Wednesday his bodyguards came to blows with security personnel accompanying former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the lobby of the Ritz Hotel.

Libyan Foreign Minister Abdel Rahman Shalgham said the visit - Gadaffi's first since 1973 - had been a success. 'Libya's relationship with France goes back 600 years. Unlike other countries, such as Britain and the United States, France never broke off diplomatic relations with us,' he said.

Sarkozy denounced 'those who excessively and irresponsibly criticized the Libyan leader's visit'. Kouchner added: 'Libya has moved on. Are we not to encourage countries that evolve?'