Sex, Nazis, and Videotape

The inestimable entertainment of the Max Mosley scandal.

London It's the cup of tea that lifts the Max Mosley sex scandal from the tawdry to the Roald Dahl-esque. "F1 boss Max Mosley has sick Nazi orgy with 5 hookers--Son of fascist Hitler lover in sex shame" blared the cover of the London News of the World tabloid, complete with a seven-page spread and a 90-second video--shot by a camera concealed in one of the girls' bra--on its website, the salient parts tactfully covered with a checkered racing flag. Unlike Eliot Spitzer's pedestrian misdeeds, where the most shocking part was the girl's inflated price tag, this one has everything. Whips, chains, Nazi uniforms, role-playing, five hookers in a Chelsea basement "dungeon" (at bargain basement prices, too; the total tab was a little under $5,000), and YouTube footage of the hanky-panky. And, in unique British style, after the floggings, spankings, German-language play-acting, and various activities, Mosley, who'd acted out both victim and guard, concluded his fantasy afternoon with the girls by sharing a cup of tea before shrugging himself back into his business suit--both the whipping bench and the restorative cuppa belong to the specific repertoire of the English sexual psyche. What gave the whole story its unique, er, twist, is Mosley's background. He is the son of Britain's most notorious Fascist couple: Sir Oswald Mosley and his second wife, Diana. Mosley founded the British Union of Fascists in 1932 after an inspirational visit chez Mussolini, and became famous as a rabble-rousing orator and troublemaker, marching into the working-class East End Jewish neighborhoods with black-shirted, goose-stepping troops equipped with knuckle-dusters and truncheons. A serial womanizer, the married Mosley had seduced the 22-year-old society beauty Diana Guinness, who left her brewery heir husband and two young sons to live openly as Mosley's mistress. Diana belonged to the glittering brood of aristocratic Bright Young Things, the six Mitford sisters, who together would span the entire spectrum of ideologies of the 20th century, from the Communist Jessica (who ran away from home to the Spanish Civil War) to the Nazi Unity (who was befriended by Hitler while in finishing-school at Munich and shot herself when war was declared). Diana sided with Unity and attended with her several Nazi party days at Nuremberg, making friends with assorted Third Reich luminaries, including Hitler, who took her to the Bayreuth festival. Mosley's first wife died of peritonitis, and, in 1936, he married Diana in the Goebbels' drawing room, with Hitler as best man. The Mosleys were interned during World War II--by order of Diana's distant cousin, Winston Churchill. Max, the Mosleys' second son, born 11 weeks prior to his parents' arrest, spent the first three and a half years of his life with nannies and relations. After the war, his parents sent him to school in Ireland, France, and Germany to shield him from the opprobrium his name evoked. It's no wonder that Max, who after Oxford trained to become a lawyer, found the world of car racing liberating when he discovered it in the mid-1960s. "He encountered a world where his name meant nothing. Indeed, fellow entrants in club races assumed he was the son of coach builder Alf Mosley from Leicester," explains the motor racing correspondent Kevin Garside. Mosley was neither a terribly successful driver, not even a first-rank team owner, but he came into his own working with his friend Bernie Ecclestone, the tycoon who now owns the Formula One commercial rights, particularly after he ousted the ageing Jean-Marie Balestre from the leadership of the sport's regulatory body in 1991. (Balestre himself had a colorful past: a former automotive journalist, he made much of his supposed wartime record with the French Resistance until pictures of him in Waffen SS uniform emerged. Somehow he still managed to get himself decorated with the Legion of Honor in 1979.) Mosley and Ecclestone--who is Jewish and a major financial contributor to Tony Blair's New Labour, as is Mosley on a smaller scale--transformed Formula One into the global, multibillion-dollar business it has become today, imposing better safety rules and capping research spending to provide a level playing field. Mosley's abrupt style and limited tolerance for fools served him well in that world of larger-than-life performers, who live (and die) fast. "If Max was in bed with two hookers, they'd say 'good for you' or something like that," Ecclestone said when he learned of the latest affair. "Assuming it's all true, what people do privately is up to them. I don't honestly believe [it] affects the sport in any way. Knowing Max it might be all a bit of a joke. You know, it's one of those things where he's sort of taking the piss, rather than anything against Jewish people." Ecclestone owes to Mosley what may be the most rewarding contract in the history of professional sports: a 100-year Formula One commercial rights exclusive, slated to run from 2010 to 2110, sanctioned by an unprecedented European Commission ruling after Mosley managed to persuade competition commissioner Mario Monti that it wasn't a monopoly. There was no tender, and Ecclestone was the lone bidder for the rights, for which he paid about $300 million. His companies are now valued 20 times that amount. Mosley feels there is no area of the sport he shouldn't concern himself with. Thus, last summer, was the Ferrari/McLaren industrial espionage criminal case, in which 800 pages of Ferrari's designs were stolen and used by McLaren-Mercedes's engineers. A criminal investigation being under way, he had no cause to intervene. Mosley nevertheless decided that the FIA--the International Automobile Association, which Mosley heads--should fine McLaren a record $100 million for "bringing the sport into disrepute." When a similar case arose with Renault (who had hired a design engineer from the McLaren stable who provided numerous engine and chassis diagrams), Mosley declined to fine them at all, contrasting Renault's "immediate contrition" with McLaren's "lies." To no one's great surprise, Mercedes was among the first to call for his resignation when the sex story broke in the News of the World, followed by BMW, then by Toyota and Honda. Mosley, who only denies the Nazi angle of the whole episode (the rest, he says, is his private life), was swift to hit back. "Given the history of BMW and Mercedes Benz, particularly before and during the Second World War, I fully understand why they would wish to strongly distance themselves from what they rightly describe as the disgraceful content of these publications." He was certainly touching on a sensitive point--the Mosley scandal, while virtually ignored by the French press, has been playing in large spreads in German newspapers--but he was also indulging in German-baiting of the "Don't Mention the War" variety. Press coverage in England has been enormous--often driven by humorous headlines and wordplay. "How about a whip-round for Max's retirement?" asked a Daily Telegraph columnist. So far, the Canadian, German, U.S., Dutch, and New Zealand motorists associations have called on him to go. (To date, only the United Arab Emirates motoring association have announced they support him.) Mosley has decided to stick it out to the end of his mandate in 2009 ("Triumph of the Wheel?" suggested the Times), but called an extraordinary FIA general assembly on June 3, at which the full membership--222 national motoring organizations from 130 countries--will take a secret-ballot vote of confidence. But is his position tenable until then? His mother, who lived to the age of 93 in Paris, told interviewers to the end that she had been "terribly, terribly fond" of Hitler, and saw no point in dissembling. She might not have admired her son's tastes, according to her biographer Anne de Courcy, but she would certainly have admired his stubbornness. © Copyright The Weekly Standard & Anne-Elisabeth Moutet 2008

How Sarko Got His Groove Back

A triumphant 36 hours in Britain.

Paris With Nicolas Sarkozy's precipitous slide in the polls finally reversed thanks to a carefully calibrated spin campaign and an unexpectedly successful state visit to Britain, there are long faces to be seen on the left--but even longer ones inside the president's own party. Call the French inconsistent. They objected to their new president's perceived flaunting of his private life. But give him a picture-perfect trip to England, complete with horse-drawn carriage ride into Windsor next to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, gala evenings, a speech before the Houses of Parliament, and a new commitment to a French-British alliance equal to the French-German "axis" that for the past half-century has kept France in the leadership of Europe--and what do the French pick up on but the accolades bestowed by the British press on Sarkozy's new wife. "London falls for Carla--Carlamania seizes Britain!" goes the headline in Le Monde. "Carla steals the show," trumpets Libération. And that's only the supposedly "serious" (and usually anti-Sarkozy) left-wing press. It took a 36-hour visit, one night at Windsor Castle, and nine dress changes (all in demure but très chic Dior) for Sarko's poll numbers, which had dropped 30 points in three months, to finally inch back up, from 35 percent to 40 percent favorable, leaving him a bit of elbow-room to announce a series of cuts in welfare spending last Friday. The week before last, everyone in France was dismissing Sarkozy as last year's wonder, a four-year lame-duck president who'd managed to squander a clear victory in record time. Worse, he'd managed to lose half a dozen large cities to the left in local elections on March 9 and 19--almost without help from the opposition Socialists. As France moves more and more into a two-party system (Sarkozy has destroyed Jean-Marie Le Pen's far-right National Front in a neat mirror-image of François Mitterrand's shrinking trick with the Communist party a quarter century ago), the Socialists still don't have a leader or a platform. Deciding on these--at their next national conference in November--promises a lively free-for-all, as former presidential candidate Ségolène Royal slugs it out with her archenemy, Paris mayor Bertrand Delanoë. Unlike their German Social Democratic or British Labour counterparts, the French Socialists still haven't formally abandoned Marxism. If they do, they fear losing the votes of France's three (count 'em!) small Trotskyite parties preaching class struggle and antiglobalization. As a result, the Socialists' message is often distorted by the tension between ideology and realism. Meanwhile, they look less modern, less diverse, and older than Sarkozy's troops, which helps explain his victory last year. (It took Sarko to appoint blacks and Muslims to major cabinet positions and to insist on strict equality between the sexes in appointments ranging from cabinet jobs to the Legion of Honor.) As Sarkozy seemed intent on an own-goal ignominious free fall, his real enemies started coming out of his own party's woodwork. They are the self-proclaimed Gaullists, to whom the new president's pro-Americanism is anathema, and the keenest of them all is a lanky figure well-known in Washington, Dominique de Villepin, the former foreign minister and prime minister of anti-Iraq war fame. Villepin and Sarkozy hate each other's guts. It's political--they have different views of the world, and Sarkozy despises in Villepin the career bureaucrat who never ran for elective office--but also personal. Villepin, who for a good while toyed with the idea of running for president himself in 2007, has been indicted in the Clearstream scandal, a smear campaign in which Sarkozy's name (and others') were faked on a computer list purporting to show holders of illegal Luxembourg bank accounts. Around 2004-05, Villepin and, in all likelihood, President Jacques Chirac, allegedly hired through intermediaries a computer expert to produce the list, in a dirty-tricks bid to prevent Sarkozy from running for president. The chief intermediary was an officer in the French intelligence service, General Philippe Rondot, who found the task distasteful enough that he kept detailed notes in his office safe, to be produced if any of this leaked. It did. It should probably be noted here that even if Villepin is found guilty and sentenced (in all likelihood to a fine and a suspended prison sentence), this will be no hindrance to his pursuing a political career. The bright line in France is personal pecuniary gain. Another former prime minister, Bordeaux mayor Alain Juppé, was three years ago sentenced to a 14-month suspended prison term for financing the Gaullist party through City of Paris coffers. Since he did not help himself to a centime, he was reelected in Bordeaux in March with an even higher majority. While Villepin is incensed that Sarko didn't lift a finger to slow down the judicial process against him (French judges are civil servants; it is not uncommon to convince them to slow a proceeding to a crawl), his official reason for opposing Sarkozy is that the president is betraying the "Gaullist legacy." One sure sign that Villepin intends to pursue an active political career, probably even run for president in 2012, is that he's recently registered with the Paris bar. He doesn't need the work--he is already getting both his prime minister's pension and an ambassador-at-large's salary from his civil service career--but as a lawyer, he can receive large fees from clients without having to disclose them. It is a known dodge in French political finance. Sarkozy himself was a barrister. So are Socialist chief François Hollande and his former partner Ségolène Royal, even though they're both (like Villepin, Chirac, and many more--but not Sarko) graduates of the illustrious Ecole Nationale d'Administration and therefore civil servants for life. Until last week, Villepin and his bevy of anti-American, anti-EU, largely pro-Arab "historic Gaullists" were licking their chops at Sarko's fall from grace, punctuating the president's descent in the polls with snide attacks. "Europe has never had borders.  .  .  . Europe made concrete commitments vis-à-vis Turkey some decades ago and [those commitments] need to be honored," Villepin told students (and the local great and good) at Galatasaray University in Istanbul, in open criticism of Sarkozy's well-known refusal to let Turkey into the EU. "France has no call to reintegrate NATO," he thundered in an interview with the radio station Europe 1, just as Sarkozy prepared to announce exactly that at the Bucharest NATO summit. "I might very well run for election in France," he confided to La Tribune de Genève. "The government's message isn't clear enough," he sniped on public radio France-Info. Even when selling his collection of Napoleon memorabilia and papers (tellingly, through the auction house owned by a longtime Mitterrand acolyte, Pierre Bergé), Villepin seized the occasion to express his grave doubts about France sending more troops to Afghanistan "in the absence of clearly defined goals by the United States and NATO." Sarkozy's reaction was typical: Just as, after winning the election last year, he brought half a dozen leftwingers into his cabinet, throwing the defeated Socialists into further disarray, last week he had two Villepin associates appointed to leadership posts within the UMP, the Gaullist party, one of them as vice secretary in charge of defense. Sarko believes that while Villepin stays out in the cold, he can whittle some of his troops away from him. It's a daring strategy, undertaken even before the poll numbers started to improve, but Sarkozy, who at 53 is two years younger than Villepin, has been in politics for twenty years longer. Villepin has written several admiring books about his hero, Napoleon, but it's Sarkozy who's got the true Bonaparte style. © Copyright The Weekly Standard & Anne-Elisabeth Moutet 2008

Anyone who discounts Nicolas Sarkozy as a lame-duck president is missing the point

Entente cordiale: Nicolas Sarkozy and his new wife, Carla Bruni, will be entertained at Windsor Castle

"Sarkozy sinks even further!" was the headline in Le Canard Enchaîné, France's Left-wing answer to Private Eye, as the French president launched a new nuclear submarine at Cherbourg last week.

Nicolas Sarkozy, who is beginning a two-day state visit to Britain on Wednesday - three months before France assumes the European Union's rotating presidency - will arrive weighed down by a controversial image and baggage as heavy as the gold Rolex watch which he has only recently been persuaded to give up.

Fellow European leaders consider, with feelings ranging from fascination to dismay, his precipitous slide in the opinion polls of more than 30 points in less than three months; his party's poor performance in last week's local elections, and the cloud of high-octane gossip that has surrounded his very public divorce and his new marriage, to the model and singer Carla Bruni.

All those marital complications may sound horribly familiar to the Queen, of course, as the mother of three children who have divorced.

She will do the French president and the new Mrs Sarkozy what Élysée aides called the "rare honour" of accommodating them at Windsor Castle - not Buckingham Palace - on Wednesday. Mrs Sarkozy has rehearsed her curtsy, ready to "follow proper British protocol", French diplomatic advisers confirmed.

The Sarkozy visit is not just designed to make him look as lofty and presidential as polls at home suggest the French would like him to be. It is also aimed at producing some substantial diplomacy, drawing Britain into a more decisive role in Europe and as a supporter of France's return to Nato, four decades after General de Gaulle walked away from the Atlantic Alliance in a huff. If it happens to miff the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, after Berlin pulled the rug from under Mr Sarkozy's projected Mediterranean Union by voting against EU subsidies, so much the better.

For, almost obscured by the publicity and paparazzi pictures, is the fact that Mr Sarkozy has a long-matured plan of what he aims to achieve in France and abroad. "I've had 30 years to think of what I'm going to do," he told an interviewer shortly after his election last year.

He may have been surprised, and infuriated, by his loss of popularity; he thought he had been elected with a clear mandate to modernise France, and that the French wouldn't mind a younger look and style to go with it. (They did, terribly; they wanted a traditional figure who would adopt a grand bedside manner while applying the forceps.)

But anyone discounting Mr Sarkozy as a four-year lame-duck president, facing opprobrium at home and abroad just like America's George W Bush, is missing the point. Mr Sarkozy is no family heir comfortably groomed for power, no École Nationale d'Administration upper civil servant gone into politics with a safety net and a network of supercilious grad school friends.

His own father, a Hungarian refugee from communism, told him, before leaving the household for a peripatetic life full of pretty women, that "with a name like yours, you'll never make it in French politics".

Mr Sarkozy got his start at the grassroots, handing out leaflets and organising young Gaullists. He snatched the city hall at Neuilly aged 28, when his political mentor had to undergo a routine operation. He has always made enemies, and has often been unpopular.

In 1995, he briefly considered quitting politics, after he left Jacques Chirac's side to support his Right-wing rival Edouard Balladur's bid for the presidency, only to see Mr Balladur trounced by the more experienced Mr Chirac. At the time, newspaper cartoons showed Mr Sarkozy as a diminutive, cartoonish traitor, and it seemed his reputation could not recover. But it did, as he forged alliances, seized the Gaullist party from Mr Chirac's remote stewardship, and eventually defeated rivals to stand alone as the Right's presidential hopeful in the polls.

After the 2005 riots, when he was interior minister, the Left, attempting to whip up an "Anyone But Sarkozy" front, painted him as a quasi-fascist and racist. This doesn't work so well today, now that he has appointed six former Left-wingers to the most diverse cabinet in French history. Mr Sarkozy is no Margaret Thatcher. He is a man of conviction, but more of a pragmatist than an ideologue. Head-on conflict doesn't work with the French, so he would rather avoid it when possible.

He believes France will suffer fatally in the global competition stakes without reforms. But he wants to slide these past the unions by agreeing to any number of temporary sweeteners, so long as his real goals - structural reform of France's too-generous social and welfare net and of the health and state school services, plus lower tax on businesses and services - remain intact.

This strategy succeeded last November, when Mr Sarkozy defused a threatened transport strike while reaching an agreement on a common retirement age for public- and private-sector workers. And even as his party was dealt a resounding slap in last Sunday's local elections, an opinion poll found that two-thirds of voters want reforms to be implemented faster. Seated in their collective dentist's chair, the French seemed to beg for the drill - and for the whole thing to be over with already.

Mr Sarkozy has now announced that he will increase the pace of reforms, to derisive comments from the Left. He can, however, brush these aside because at national level he has only a divided opposition with which to contend.

The recent "bling-bling" anti-Sarkozy campaign was waged on style, not substance, precisely because the Socialist party is still split between two leadership contenders (Ségolène Royal, whom Mr Sarkozy beat to become president, and Bertrand Delanoë, the mayor of Paris), has no platform, and can't manage to make peace with the Greens and three small Trotskyite parties whose votes it crucially needs.

The president's real opponents are within his own party, where the old anti-Atlanticist Gaullists, horrified by what they see as a betrayal of France's non-aligned tradition, are hoping that a challenger will emerge to stand against him for the Gaullist candidacy in the 2012 presidential election.

One such might be Alain Juppé, mayor of Bordeaux and a former prime minister; another possibility is the former foreign secretary and prime minister, Dominique de Villepin. But Mr Sarkozy's bet is that he has more political experience, and more experience of life's reversals, than any of his rivals.

Watch him this week as he proclaims a "new fraternity" between France and Britain, in a carefully honed speech to both Houses of Parliament. He has been knocked down before, but never out.

© Copyright Telegraph Media Group & Anne-Elisabeth Moutet 2008

Now he's married Carla, can Nicolas Sarkozy re-engage the French?

When Nicolas Sarkozy finally tied the knot with Carla Bruni in the white drawing-room at the Elysée Palace yesterday, in front of their arrondissement mayor and 20 or so close friends, the overriding feeling - if not the blissfully happy groom's, then his friends' - was of sheer relief.

Once again, after a successful and unorthodox whirlwind campaign, the French President seemed ready to fall back to more traditional standards. Making an honest woman of 40-year-old Bruni, who has an impressive array of famous conquests to her credit but has never actually been married (hence the immaculate white wedding dress), seemed the best possible conclusion to a three-month rollercoaster that had cost the president 24 points in the opinion polls.

Having protested for decades that they understood more about moral, sentimental and sexual complexity than those poor naive Anglo-Saxons, the French finally revealed themselves as closer to their 19th-century petit-bourgeois Roman Catholic ancestors - that same French bourgeoisie which Karl Marx famously derided as "the most stupid in the world" - than to any Left Bank, existentialist cliché.

Forget Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre. In those few weeks in which Sarko slid in popularity ratings from 65 per cent to 41 per cent, he has been accused of being "vulgar," "immoral," and "bling-bling" (the French press can't get enough of this phrase; you keep expecting pictures of the president breaking into a rap with Snoop Dog instead of singing along with his old pal Johnny Hallyday after dinner).

Two-timing your wife, having a mistress on the side, receiving part of your presidential stipend in cash in brown envelopes, enjoying the indefinite use of a luxury flat from the family of a foreign politician, charging the Republic for your second family's holidays in five-star hotels - none of this was a problem for previous presidents as long as they kept mum. Yet being left by your wife, divorcing, falling in love again, taking a glamorous girlfriend on holiday to those same five-star hotels (but paying your way) has turned out to be a complete no-no. "The image of France is wrecked!" was the consensus, from columnists and bloggers spluttering with rage.

While protesting that they didn't want to know anything about the President's private life, the French couldn't get enough of it, raising the sales of any paper and magazine featuring the two lovebirds, then castigating Sarko for stage-managing it.

This suddenly made it very difficult for Sarko to sell his reform package to the country. He won a crucial battle against the transport unions over his pensions reform in November, pledging to tell the French "the truth". It's not certain he would have succeeded one month later. The truth, it's turning out, is not terribly valued in France. Keeping up appearances wins you more points.

Now, six weeks away from municipal elections in which the Right expects to lose comprehensively, Sarkozy's troops, and the President himself, feel that a little new-found conventionality might go a long way. To give him his due, Sarko always meant to marry Carla as soon as possible. Like Napoleon, another short French leader of foreign origin who famously divorced and remarried in office, the 53-year-old President makes up his mind quickly. But left to his own devices, it's very likely he would have enjoyed a big party. (Paris insiders will tell you that Carla asked Chanel's über-designer Karl Lagerfeld to the Elysée a couple of weeks ago, and commissioned two very grand couture dresses; that she finally opted to get married in a less flamboyant if no less stylish creation by the whimsical Gaultier for the very Protestant House of Hermès may tell its own tale too.)

At any rate, one of the most commonly expressed objections to the whole saga - that Bruni would soon dump him - has not happened. For this everyone is profoundly thankful. The French are a cruel race: showing vulnerability is a cardinal mistake. The only time Sarko's presidential bid seemed in danger of faltering was in 2005, not so much because his wife had left him a first time, but because he seemed so affected by it. His public wooing of Bruni was the ultimate risk-taking by this unconventional politician in a structurally risk-averse country. In this case, Sarko has fulfilled Napoleon's first requirement from his generals, that they "be lucky".

Lucky in more ways than one, it seems. Cecilia used to divide her husband's associates into friends and enemies, freezing out anyone who displeased her. From all accounts, Bruni has been at pains to reconcile both camps, inviting to a surprise birthday party for Sarko both the formerly disgraced and some of Cecilia's own close friends, such as Justice Minister Rachida Dati. "It's obvious she'd been reading up a lot on recent political developments and thought things through," one guest commented.

The happy couple's next projected State visit, to Britain in a month's time, can now proceed apace with no more question marks over proper protocol, and the new Madame Sarkozy can exercise her unexpected talent for teamwork by wowing them at Buckingham Palace in a statelier fashion than she once used on the catwalks.

© Copyright Telegraph Media Group & Anne-Elisabeth Moutet 2008

Suburbs plan disappoints Nicolas Sarkozy

When Fadela Amara, the popular 43-year-old junior urban affairs minister, announces France's much-awaited "Hope for the Suburbs" plan on Tuesday at Vaulx-en-Velin, a working-class suburb of Lyons, she will be flanked by several members of the Cabinet.

But not by President Nicolas Sarkozy, as was initially intended.

This is because the plan is known to have deeply disappointed the president, to the extent that he last week quietly commissioned a trans-cabinet task force to come up with more radical and wide-ranging reforms for his own presentation of "the details of the suburbs plan", scheduled for 8 February.

A famously forceful interior minister under Jacques Chirac, Mr Sarkozy was branded an authoritarian (and worse) by the opposition because of his often-misquoted remark on ridding dangerous neighbourhoods of "scum".

In fact, the word was never meant to refer to all young inhabitants of the troubled areas, only the rioters, and was indeed first used by local residents themselves during a Sarkozy walkabout at Argenteuil in October 2005.

Mr Sarkozy was elected on a platform which included finding solutions to the ethnic and unemployment problems which led to France's month-long 2005 race riots. His first move was to assemble France's first multi-cultural cabinet, with several representatives of what are known here as "visible minorities", instead of the lily-white governments, both Left and Right, which had until then ruled the country.

Ms Amara is a French-Algerian socialist alderwoman from the Auvergne capital, Clermont-Ferrand, and a vigorous feminist activist who founded the Ni Putes, Ni Soumises (Neither Whores, Nor Submissives) movement in response to forced marriages, violence and gang rapes of women in France's worst areas.

She is also perhaps the most visible representative of "the new France" in the cabinet and has retained the colourful accent and expressions of the banlieues, breaking into Arabic on occasion when visiting sink estates.

Unlike Rachida Dati, the glamorous and well-spoken justice minister who is the first woman of North African background to hold a key ministerial position, Ms Amara has never set foot in a Dior shop, cuts her hair in her own bathroom, and still lives in a council flat in a working-class part of Paris rather than use her ministry's official residence near the Eiffel Tower.

She is regularly rated as one of the three most popular ministers in the cabinet and a television profile of her screened in prime time last Thursday garnered some of the evening's best ratings.

She, therefore, cannot be allowed to fail, and will stand next to the Mr Sarkozy when he finally details "her" plan's measures in three weeks' time.

Tuesday's exercise in Vaulx-en-Velin will essentially be yet another of those symbolic numbers so beloved of French politicians, in which a number of piecemeal, if well-meaning, measures will be thrown at the assembled media to show that Something Is Being Done.

Almost all of the initiatives announced in Ms Amara's Madame Figaro interview yesterday are already in operation, some for several years. Her ministry doesn't have much of a budget of its own, and is dependent on the co-operation of other, more powerful administrations, such as education, transport and health, to effect any kind of significant change.

Until the Elysée stepped in last week, Ms Amara's abrasive personality and the relative inexperience of her chief aides had not earned her much goodwill among other mandarins.

Contrary to public perception, a great deal of money has always been thrown at France's most disenfranchised areas - though not always judiciously. Even more is regularly spent on infrastructure - transport, communications, public conveniences and post offices - in a country where long-term state investment is tantamount to a lay religion. (One politically incorrect testimony to the excellence of French public transport is the sudden drop in petty crime in city centres whenever the transport unions have called a strike.)

Meanwhile, a bevy of France's supercilious but competent technocrats are now slaving away at finding radical ways of facing the stark reality that between 15 and 20 per cent of France's population live in semi-ghettoes where a de facto apartheid already exists, especially when it comes to housing and schools.

Solutions, they feel, should be radical. For instance, ending social housing policies to replace them with personalised grants so that poorer citizens can actually look for homes on the open market. This, however, would mean dismantling a entire bureaucracy which can be confidently expected to be obstructive.

If anyone can do the job - and half a dozen similar ones - it's Nicolas Sarkozy himself.

© Copyright Telegraph Media Group & Anne-Elisabeth Moutet 2008

Cécilia Sarkozy may change France more

The Sarkozy divorce news finally came out last Thursday, on the day of the first mass transport strike in France since 1995. With its terse press release, the Elysée was obviously intent on burying bad headlines.

If it had been Britain, it would clearly have been an attempt to hide a politician's embarrassing matrimonial breakdown. Not in France. Media-savvy Sarko was using his high-profile divorce to deflect attention from the much more harmful consequences of an industrial dispute. That is a key difference between our two countries.

The truth is that while we voters here in France like a good gossip, we're about as likely to judge our leaders on personal transgressions as to expect them not to have affairs. It's when they don't have any that we worry.

Ever since the time of Robespierre and the Revolution, the French have been deeply distrustful of "incorruptible" politicians who lead a blameless life. Since Nicolas Sarkozy is a keep-fit-crazed teetotaller, he's almost obliged to have an eye for the ladies — he'd be highly suspect otherwise.

Nor did anyone mistake the final split as having been caused by both Nicolas's and Cécilia's affairs during their 11-year marriage (and nearly 20 years of life together).

Yes, she left him two years ago to spend a couple of months in New York with a high-profile event organiser, and has been spotted more recently with a French novelist.

Yes, even before his carefully-leaked affair with a Le Figaro political journalist – in some ways a tit-for-tat designed to show Cécilia he was emphatically not pining – Sarko was well-known for office flings, usually with comely staffers (one of whom, some 15 years back, was Jacques Chirac's daughter Claude).

But none of this is the stuff French divorces are made of. Most couples are expected to weather a significant amount of straying.

The example comes from the top. Not a single Fifth Republic president, with the possible exception of Georges Pompidou, who was unfashionably in love with his wife, refrained from playing the field — not even De Gaulle, whose discreet affairs took place long before he reached the Elysée at 68, and are not common knowledge.

Mitterrand used to go on the pull with his Foreign Minister, Roland Dumas, thereby cheating on both his wife, Danielle, and his regular mistress, Anne Pingeot. This was well-known in Paris, if not printed because of stringent French privacy laws.

So when 92 per cent of respondents told a Le Parisien poll yesterday that their opinion of Nicolas Sarkozy won't be affected one way or another by his divorce, why, you might ask, are there still such laws in the first place?

First, because until recently, hypocrisy was seen as one of the cardinal virtues in France. George Orwell may have coined the term, but we live doublespeak every day.

In a country where apologies are seen as an unforgivable admission of weakness, it's the (relative) whiteness of one's lies that sometimes gets questioned, not the practice itself.

To the French, the resignation of Lord Browne from BP (or, for that matter, Bill Clinton's impeachment) was incomprehensible.

Of course Browne lied about his sex life — if anything, evidence of good sense and his capacity to run a major multinational oil company (or a superpower) with the required amount of sophistication in a difficult world.

It's frankness that gets you in hot water here. My grandfather, Marius Moutet, a former cabinet minister and senator, never made a secret of his complicated private life, which included two (consecutive) wives and an official mistress whom he regularly took to state functions.

He recognised all his children from his various women, so I spent happy holidays in the family house in the Drôme countryside with my cousins and their assorted parents.

Later, I found out that his openness cost him the presidency of the Fourth Republic back in 1953, when the President was elected by the two Houses.

It took 13 ballots to reach a decision; my grandfather's name came up a number of times, always to be shot down with "Monsieur Moutet's private life does not bear inspection." What his colleagues meant was not that he had women but that, unlike them, he didn't lie about it.

Second, the French don't like to admit, even to themselves, their guilty pleasures. No, not sex, that's absolutely fine. But taking a prurient (or what is seen as prurient by our tame standards) interest in others' private lives is the sin you never own up to.

It's not that there isn't an interest — tabloids and trashy weeklies, which set aside a hefty budget for fines and illegally expose celebrities' private lives, sell more copies than all newspapers combined.

It's like a taste for American fast food (superciliously foodie France has the largest number of McDonald's franchises per capita outside the US): unacknowledged, shameful, irreconcilable with the lofty image of ourselves we need to hold.

Yet this may be changing at last, and for that we have both 2007 presidential candidates to thank. This last election was contested by two candidates whose domestic relationships were about to implode, and have, indeed, now done so.

More significant, perhaps, is that both Ségolène Royal and Nicolas Sarkozy were outsiders who relentlessly cultivated personal publicity to dislodge their respective parties' heavyweights. This made their complacently-touted private lives fair game to the media, as legitimate political coverage.

When Ségolène publicly kicked her partner, François Hollande, out of their home, his longstanding affair with a Paris-Match political journalist was reported in one of the celebrity mags.

Hollande and his girlfriend duly sued for invasion of privacy. She was awarded damages, he wasn't — on the grounds that he had already paraded too much of his life for the media to be "harmed" by the invasion of his privacy.

But nowhere does the law actually make such a distinction – and in a Roman-law country where the Civil Code counts for more than jurisprudence, and where judges are civil servants who are not meant to make or amend the law, this is a groundbreaking ruling.

Expect, therefore, more coverage of French public figures' private lives in the future — but not much more accountability. This being a Latin and a Catholic country, it's money that can harm a politician's career – not just corruption, but simple familiarity with the ways and means of the rich.

Sarko's brief summer holiday on a billionaire businessman friend's yacht cost him far more in popularity ratings than anything he and Cécilia could cook up. (The hospitality of Tony Blair's rich cronies would have destroyed his image if he'd been French.)

As for Cécilia, who once boasted that she "didn't have one drop of French blood in her" (born in France, she's of Spanish-Russian-Romanian extraction), she probably wasn't as disingenuous as she sounded when, protesting that she had left because she couldn't stand the glare of publicity, she nonetheless gave interviews on Friday.

"One day, you no longer feel at home in the couple. The couple is no longer the essential thing in your life. It doesn't work any more. The reasons are inexplicable," she said.

In truth, she left because she was bored. She'd done it once before, dropping her famous, older, TV presenter first husband for the 30-year-old Sarkozy.

This is part of the fascination she undeniably exerts on the French, and very likely on Sarko himself — they don't understand someone running off just when they've reached the top. Unable to fake interest for too long, she's a bolter. It is, let's face it, a type more classically British than French.

© Copyright Telegraph Media Group & Anne-Elisabeth Moutet 2007

Françoise Giroud, a flawed heroine of French feminism

Françoise Giroud, who has died aged 86, was a former minister for culture, founding editor of L'Express, and flawed heroine of French feminism. Both she and her contemporary Katharine Graham, the owner and publisher of the Washington Post, influenced journalism and politics in their countries. However, Giroud, unlike heiress Graham, was the self-made daughter of a Turkish journalist.

She was born in Geneva, and left school at 14 to learn secretarial skills. She got a job at a bookshop in Paris, found work as a continuity girl on some of France's best-known films, including Jean Renoir's La Grande Illusion; and quickly graduated to screenwriter, then assistant director. During the second world war, she was jailed by the Gestapo at Fresnes prison and narrowly escaped being deported, like her younger sister Douce.

Post-war, Giroud was hired by Hélène Gordon Lazareff for her new women's magazine, Elle, whose editor-in-chief she became within months; she also produced some of France's best sketches for France Soir and France Dimanche.

Giroud will primarily be remembered, though, for creating L'Express in 1953, initially a campaigning weekly opposing colonial war in Indo-China and Algeria. She set it up with her married lover, Jean-Jacques Servan-Schreiber, maverick scion of a publishing family. The duo transformed it with great success 10 years later, adapting the glossy Time/News-week newsmagazine formula in France.

When Servan-Schreiber's first wife, the novelist Madeleine Chapsal, finally left him in 1960, he married a younger writer: Giroud made a much-publicised suicide attempt. She went into psychoanalysis, aged 40, in 1966, with the charismatic Jacques Lacan. Years later, she wrote in her memoirs, Leçons Particulières (Private Lessons): "Had I met Lacan when I was 25, my entire life would have been different. I would have loved different men, I would not have created L'Express."

Giroud was famous for her elegant, spare writing style. She contributed to the political demise of Gaullist premier Jacques Chaban Delmas when she dismissed his 1974 candidacy for the presidency: "You don't shoot an ambulance." Unlike Servan-Schreiber, she was a workaholic perfectionist who would rewrite copy and polish headlines far into the night before sending out the week's L'Express to the printers. She encouraged a new generation of women journalists, helping them polish their writing and personal style, then sending them to ferret out stories from France's notoriously vain male politicians.

Yet she never called herself a feminist, rarely believing in the frontal attack. Her women journalists were competent, often talented; but they were also notorious for their affairs with politicians and business tycoons. A former Giroud protégée who refused to play this game turned to foreign reporting, in which she was equally encouraged by Giroud.

Giroud, a lifelong left-winger, crossed party lines in 1974 when she agreed to become president Giscard d'Estaing's junior minister for women. Servan-Schreiber, with whom she worked at L'Express until he started his own Radical party in 1969, was in the same cabinet, as minister for reforms, a job he held for 13 days. Giroud was made of sterner stuff, and having tested the limits of her portfolio (the most important feminist reform, the liberalisation of abortion, was defended in the Assemblée Nationale in 1975 by health minister Simone Veil), she stayed on in politics in the 1976 Barre cabinet as minister for culture.

By 1978 she left, and in 1981 she voted for her Socialist friend François Mitterrand, whose portrait as a promising politician she had been the first to sketch in France Dimanche in 1951.

From then on she returned to writing. In 1974, Servan-Schreiber had sold L'Express from under her to a conglomerate: Giroud soon found a home at its left-leaning rival, Le Nouvel Observateur, writing a weekly column from 1983 until last week.

She also wrote some 30 books of varying quality: forgettable biographies; a few romans à clef (the most notable, Le Bon Plaisir, told the thinly veiled story of Mitterrand's lovechild, which Giroud had always forbidden her journalists to break: Giroud wrote the screenplay for the movie adaptation). There were several first-rate memoirs, in which her unique voice can be heard: Le Journal d'Une Parisienne, the ferocious La Comédie du Pouvoir, on her ministerial experiences, and On Ne Peut Être Heureux Tout Le Temps (One can't always be happy).

She married briefly in the 1950s: her son died in an accident, and she is survived by her daughter, the child psychoanalyst Caroline Eliacheff. Over the last 30 years, her constant companion was the late editor and publisher Alex Grall.

· Françoise Giroud, journalist and politician, born November 21 1916; died January 19 2003

© Copyright © Guardian News and Media & Anne-Elisabeth Moutet 2003

Saga d'un divorce annoncé : un demi-siècle de relations américano-saoudiennes

13 décembre 2002 / 18 h 33
Saga d'un divorce annoncé : un demi-siècle de relations américano-saoudiennes

Par Anne-Elisabeth Moutet

Quand l'Amérique découvre les immenses gisements saoudiens en 1938, commence une relation basée sur un complet malentendu, pétrole et argent, beaucoup d'argent, contre protection militaire. Le tout déguisé en amitié entre la démocratie US et la théocratie saoudienne. Et les Saoudiens savent prendre généreusement soin de leurs amis. Ce qui aurait dû en être l'apothéose, la Guerre du Golfe, est le début de la fin. Le fils du président le plus allié aux pétroliers subira de plein fouet les attaques terroristes du 11 septembre 2 001 perpétrées par des Saoudiens endoctrinés par l'islam d'État wahhabite, qui refusent l'alliance avec les « infidèles ». Aujourd'hui, pour l'Amérique, l'Arabie saoudite ne fait plus partie de la solution mais du problème.

C'est par un coup de téléphone d'un journaliste du « New York Times » tentant d'obtenir un commentaire que le prince Bandar ben Sultan, inamovible ambassadeur d'Arabie saoudite à Washington, a appris la semaine dernière la démission des trois partenaires fondateurs de la firme de relations publiques et de lobbying de Washington, Qorvis Communications, qu'il avait embauchés à 200 000 dollars par mois pour essayer de redorer l'image du Royaume aux États-Unis depuis le 11 septembre. La Démocrate Judy Smith, une ex-porte-parole adjointe de la Maison Blanche Clinton, ainsi que les Républicains, Bernie Merritt et Jim Weber, ont préféré déménager à New York dans une autre société de RP, Clark & Weinstock. Officiellement, personne ne commente. Sous le sceau de l'anonymat, les collègues des trois transfuges expliquent qu'ils se sentaient de plus en plus mal à l'aise à tenter de défendre l'Arabie saoudite devant l'opinion américaine alors que les preuves du financement d'Al-Qaïda par des personnalités saoudiennes s'amoncellent.

Le coup de grâce fut les révélations sur l'épouse même (et cousine) du prince-ambassadeur, la princesse Haifa al-Faisal : elle versait des mensualités de 2 000 dollars à deux Saoudiens installés à San Diego, Osama Bassnan et Omar al-Bayoumi, qui les faisaient reverser immédiatement à deux des terroristes du 11 septembre, Khalid al-Midhar and Nawaf Alhazmi. "Il s'agit de donations charitables ! La princesse avait accepté de payer les frais médicaux de Mme Bassnan," proteste l'ambassade. Rien n'y fait. Des questions dérangeantes sont posées au Congrès ; une commission d'enquête est montée ; les États-Unis demandent officiellement une plus grande coopération dans les enquêtes financières sur les bailleurs de fonds du terrorisme dans le Royaume, dont beaucoup utilisent des organisations charitables confessionnelles de l'islam extrême wahhabite qui est la religion officielle de l'Arabie saoudite.

		Les nationaux saoudiens forment la majorité des troupes d'Al-Qaïda et des prisonniers de Guantanamo

Pour le prince Bandar, doyen policé du corps diplomatique de Washington, dont les réceptions dans sa propriété de McLean (le Neuilly de la capitale américaine), de la station de ski d'Aspen ou son château de Wychwood dans l'Oxfordshire sont courues de tout l'establishment - et qui est, avec son père le prince Sultan, l'un des investisseurs du fonds géant Carlyle Group aux côtés de George Bush père - c'est la suite d'un cauchemar qui a commencé quelques heures à peine après le 11 septembre. Très vite, il s'est avéré que 15 des 19 terroristes étaient de nationalité saoudienne (et les nationaux saoudiens forment l'immense majorité des troupes d'Al-Qaïda tout comme des prisonniers de Guantanamo). D'allié inébranlable des États-Unis, l'Arabie saoudite a pris un autre visage au fur et à mesure que le projecteur des médias et des commissions d'enquêtes s'est braqué sur elle.

Même si Osama ben Laden lui-même a été déchu de sa nationalité saoudienne en 1994, une opinion publique américaine furieuse découvre, à travers des investigations et de nouvelles traductions de la presse saoudienne et des prêches des imams wahhabites, que le clergé et les journalistes saoudiens du royaume appellent quotidiennement au jihad contre les États-Unis, les chrétiens et les juifs. Cachés jusque-là par les fructueuses relations entre les deux pays -(l'Arabie saoudite est le plus fidèle fournisseur étranger de pétrole des États-Unis ; mais ceux-ci ont formé les militaires et les cadres de l'État saoudien ; investi les fortunes des quelque 8000 membres de la famille royale ; fourni les armements de l'armée saoudienne, et bien sûr défendu l'intégrité du territoire saoudien en 1991) - des conflits individuels généralement nés de séparations de couples mixtes américano-saoudiens se révèlent aussi. Des centaines d'enfants de nationalité américaine, dont les intérêts sont maintenant défendus par le député républicain Dan Burton d'Indiana, sont ainsi retenus par leurs pères en Arabie saoudite sans que leurs mères ne puissent les revoir. Pendant des années, le Département d'État avait tenté de minimiser le mauvais effet de tels contentieux sur les relations américano-saoudiennes, en poussant les familles américaines à la discrétion. Elle devient impossible, tout comme les persécutions qu'encourent les expatriés chrétiens pour pratiquer leur religion en Arabie saoudite. Les mauvais points s'accumulent.

Les Saoudiens ont dépensé plus de 5 millions de dollars pour redorer leur image

Qorvis est loin d'être la seule société de relations publiques engagée par le gouvernement saoudien pour tenter de limiter les dégâts. Un examen des déclarations de lobbying du Département de la Justice (elles sont obligatoires pour représenter des intérêts étrangers) révèle une approche bipartisane des relais d'influence de la capitale. Le gouvernement saoudien a dépensé plus de 5 millions de dollars et embauché autant de Démocrates (Patton-Boggs, fondé par le fils d'un président du groupe démocrate à la Chambre, qui a reçu 170 000 dollars rien que pour le premier semestre 2002 ; et le cabinet d'avocats Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld, fondé par le clintonien Robert W. Strauss, ancien président du Comité Démocrate National, payé 161 799 dollars pour la même période) que de Républicains (le conseiller James P. Gallagher, ex-assistant d'un sénateur du new Hampshire, et l'agence d'achat d'espace Sandler-Innocenzi, qui place beaucoup des pages de publicité du Parti républicain.

Aux côtés du prince Bandar, un conseiller très spécial, dépêché par le Prince héritier Abdullah lui-même, Adel al-Jubeir, dirige depuis plusieurs mois les efforts de relations publiques saoudiens aux États-Unis. Portant bien ses 40 ans et ses costumes sur mesure Brooks Brothers, Al-Jubeir qui a fait ses études au Texas et à l'université de Georgetown et a longtemps résidé en Amérique, parle un anglais parfait, et donne de sa personne sur toutes les chaînes de télévision. Il accompagne d'ailleurs fréquemment la journaliste politique de NBC Campbell Brown lors de dîners en ville. C'est lui qui a décidé de l'achat de pages de publicité vantant l'amitié saoudo-américaine dans des publications aussi disparates que "People" (équivalent de "Gala") et le "Stars & Stripes", quotidien de l'armée américaine. But officiel : toucher le public américain où qu'il soit. Conçus par Qorvis, les placards pleine-page montrent une colombe de la paix volant au-dessus des drapeaux des deux pays, avec le slogan "Deux nations, un seul but". Difficile de ne pas penser que les Saoudiens espèrent une certaine reconnaissance d'une presse durement atteinte par la baisse des budgets publicitaires (et, dans le cas du "Stars & Stripes", un peu d'indulgence des militaires auxquels le royaume refuse toujours par ailleurs l'usage de bases en Arabie saoudite pour une éventuelle attaque contre l'Irak.) Le newsmagazine "Time", qui appartient comme "People" à AOL-Time-Warner, a publié des interviews de sources saoudiennes réfutant les accusations contre la princesse Haifa, initialement révélées par son concurrent "Newsweek" – qui lui n'a reçu aucun budget publicitaire saoudien.

		L'impartialité d'une commission d'enquête sur le financement des réseaux de la terreur est déjà récusée parce que présidée par Kissinger dont le cabinet de consultants a eu des clients saoudiens

"Les Saoudiens traitent toutes ces affaires comme s'il s'agissait uniquement d'un problème d'image", dit le sénateur démocrate de Floride Bob Graham. "Mais nous sommes bien au-delà d'un problème de relations publiques". La réalité des relations américano-saoudiennes, noyée pendant des années dans un flou volontaire, et la nature même du régime de Riyad est maintenant attaquée par les ténors politiques des deux partis, y compris deux anciens candidats à la présidence, le Démocrate du Connecticut Joe Lieberman comme le Républicain d'Arizona John McCain. À la suite de l'affaire de la princesse Haifa, et se fondant sur un rapport sur le financement du terrorisme du Council on Foreign Relationsqui déclare notamment que "depuis des années, la plus importante source de fonds d'Al-Qaïda est provenue d'individus et d'organisations charitables basés en Arabie saoudite, et depuis des années, les responsables saoudiens ont refusé d'examiner ce problème", la commission des finances du Sénat a demandé la formation d'une commission d'enquête sur le financement des réseaux de la terreur. Mais avant même qu'elle soit complètement formée, son impartialité a déjà été mise en question : elle doit être présidée par Henry Kissinger, dont le cabinet de consultants, Kissinger Associates, a eu dans le passé des clients saoudiens – et qui fut le premier artisan, en 1974, des liens économiques américano-saoudiens.

Si le royaume d'Arabie saoudite a été créé par les Britanniques en 1930, l'alliance américano-saoudienne est concrétisée quinze ans plus tard : le 16 février 1945 a lieu sur une île du Grand Lac Amer du Canal du Suez une rencontre entre Franklin Roosevelt et le roi Abdul-Aziz Ibn Saud scellant une alliance politique et économique qui a fonctionné dans une efficace discrétion pendant près d'un demi-siècle. Elle ne faisait qu'entériner une présence américaine de la première heure dans les champs pétroliers du nouveau royaume : c'est la Standard Oil of California des Rockefeller qui apporte son savoir-faire, découvre les premiers gisements, et crée l'Aramco (Arab-American Oil Company) en 1938, puis, devant l'immensité des ressources saoudiennes, introduit Texaco, Exxon et Mobil pour se partager la tâche. Dans les années 50, c'est l'Aramco qui finance les études de centaines de jeunes Saoudiens dans les universités américaines.

Tout est monté sur le modèle américain par des experts importés. Les Saoudiens paient

Paradoxalement, ces liens ne font que se renforcer après le crash pétrolier de 1973-1974, puis le coup de sang bien réfléchi du roi Khaled en 1975 qui nationalise toutes les sociétés pétrolières étrangères du royaume. Une série d'articles remarquables de Robert Kaiser et David Ottaway dans le « Washington Post » retrace la genèse de cette relation. Le quadruplement du prix du baril rend impératif pour les économies occidentales de trouver à recycler les pétrodollars d'une façon ou d'une autre. L'Arabie saoudite doit, elle, placer une partie de ces sommes immenses, et utiliser le reste pour se moderniser. L'administration Nixon – c'est-à-dire principalement le Secrétaire d'État Henry Kissinger, puisque Nixon lui-même démissionne le 9 août – dépêche dès l'été 1974 le Secrétaire au Trésor, William Simon, à Riyad : outre un dossier complet vantant les Bons du Trésor US, Simon apporte la proposition, concoctée avec Kissinger, de créer une "Commission Saoudo-Américaine pour la Coopération Économique" destinée à intégrer la modernisation de l'Arabie saoudite selon le système, et avec des conseillers et des fournisseurs américains. Le modèle est simple : l'Amérique conseille, conçoit, construit. Les Saoudiens paient. Cela va du dessalement de l'eau de mer à la création d'un corps des Douanes et de l'Immigration ; des installations aéroportuaires à un Institut National de la Statistique ; de la modernisation de l'armée saoudienne à la construction de ports internationaux clés en mains, civils et militaires. Système bancaire, bourse, banque centrale, académies militaires, tout est monté sur le modèle américain par des experts importés.

		Sur trente ans, on estime à quelque 400 milliards de dollars les sommes dépensées chez des fournisseurs et institutions américaines

Dès le retour de William Simon à Washington, les Saoudiens ouvrent un compte spécial directement au département du Trésor, destiné à payer les frais et les salaires des employés américains de la Commission saoudo-americaine de coopération, et sur lequel transitera plus d'un milliard de dollars. Sur trente ans, on estime à quelque 400 milliards de dollars les sommes dépensées chez des fournisseurs et institutions américaines, dont environ 50 milliards sont passés en "commissions" diverses. Pour chaque projet ou affaire réalisée en Arabie saoudite, il est obligatoire en effet de passer par un "agent" local, souvent membre de la famille royale, rétribué au minimum 5% du montant total du contrat, souvent plus. Si les sociétés pétrolières américaines ne possèdent plus le pétrole extrait des gisements saoudiens, ce sont elles qui, comme par le passé, supervisent raffineries et distribution, et revendent le produit fini aux États-Unis et dans le monde.

Le Génie de l'armée américaine construit d'immenses bases militaires dans le désert. Longtemps, la nouvelle armée saoudienne s'équipera exclusivement US (vers les années 80, l'opposition du Congrès à des ventes d'armements qui pourraient menacer directement Israël amènera par exemple le prince Bandar à négocier secrètement entre 1985 et 1988 l'acquisition, pour un milliard de dollars, de missiles chinois CSS2 d'une portée de 2400 kilomètres, à la fureur de l'administration Reagan.) En tout, le Royaume achètera pour plus de 100 milliards de dollars d'avions de chasse F-5 et F-16, de chars Bradley, M-1 et Abrams, d'avions AWACs d'observation, de bateaux en tous genres, de missiles, munitions, transports de troupes blindés, etc. C'est pareil pour les acquisitions de matériel civil. La Saudi Airlines vole Boeing, atterrit sur les aéroports conçus par Bechtel, loge ses équipages dans des immeubles conçus par des architectes américains. Dans les années 70-80, c'est par dizaines de milliers que les jeunes Saoudiens vont étudier en Amérique : aujourd'hui, expliquent Kaiser et Ottaway, sur 30 ministres du gouvernement saoudien, 21 ont des diplômes américains, dont 16 doctorats.

100 000 Saoudiens possèdent une résidence sur le sol américain

Pour les membres des classes privilégiées saoudiennes, l'Amérique permet de mener une double vie dont ils intègrent tellement le caractère schizophrénique qu'il ne sera remis en question que par les accusations portées, post-11 septembre, contre leur pays aux États-Unis. On estime à quelque 100 000 le nombre de Saoudiens qui possèdent une résidence sur le sol américain. Là, ils vivent une vie peu différente de celle de leurs voisins : leurs femmes ne sont pas voilées, peuvent sortir de chez elles sans être accompagnées par un membre mâle de leur famille, et sont autorisées à conduire - ce qui leur est légalement interdit en Arabie saoudite depuis 1975 par une loi du roi Khaled. Adel al-Jubeir avoue volontiers que sa propre mère n'a pris le volant d'une voiture, pour la première fois de sa vie, que lors d'une visite en Amérique. Le prince Bandar sert vodka et champagne dans les réceptions somptueuses de sa villa de McLean, ou dans son chalet de 7 000 mètres carrés estimé à 55 millions de dollars d'Aspen.

		15 jeunes filles brûlées vives parce qu'elles ne portaient pas de voile

Pas étonnant peut-être qu'ils en oublient la réalité de la vie des 18 millions de citoyens saoudiens qui n'ont aucun lien avec la famille royale, et dont le revenu moyen a baissé de 65% en 20 ans - de 19 000 dollars (constants) en 1981 à 7300 dollars (constants) en 1997, la dernière date à laquelle les statistiques sont disponibles. Ainsi, lors de l'offensive de charme organisée par Adel al-Jubeir auprès des journalistes influents américains, il s'est trouvé escorter l'éditorialiste politique du « New York Times », Maureen Dowd, dans les rues de Riyad. (Depuis un an, les frontières du Royaume et le palais du Prince Abdallah se sont brusquement ouverts à la fine fleur de la presse américaine alors qu'un visa de presse était tout simplement impossible à obtenir précédemment.) Manque de chance, la Mutawwa, la police religieuse, qui patrouille les rues du Royaume armée de fouets pour verbaliser immédiatement les infractions à la conception wahhabite de la décence, trouve que Dowd montre – shocking ! – un bout de cheville sous son voile noir, et l'agresse immédiatement. "Je ne les avais jamais rencontrés auparavant !", s'excuse al-Jubeir en essayant de réparer le mauvais effet produit. Dans son article, Dowd ne mentionnera pas l'anecdote ; mais elle raconte l'histoire beaucoup plus grave des 15 jeunes filles de 13, 14 et 15 ans que cette même Mutawwa a laissé brûler vives dans l'incendie de leur école de La Mecque, plutôt que de les laisser fuir les flammes sans voile ni foulard. On imagine l'effet sur le lectorat du « New York Times ».

Les anciens ambassadeurs américains à Riyad reçoivent de généreux fonds saoudiens

Mais si, une fois qu'ils braquent le projecteur sur l'Arabie saoudite, les journalistes américains trouvent bien peu de choses à défendre, ce n'est pas le cas d'une grande partie de l'Establishment de Washington, les diplomates du Département d'État et la famille Bush en tête. Pour un ambassadeur américain à Riyad qui tient tête aux Saoudiens, comme Hume Horan - à qui ils ne pardonnèrent jamais ses origines iraniennes, et surtout sa connaissance étendue de la langue et de la culture arabes, lui permettant de s'informer par lui-même, et qui fut vite rappelé sur requête du roi Fahd -, il y en a dix qui, une fois de retour à Washington, deviennent de fait les ambassadeurs du régime saoudien auprès du gouvernement et des décideurs américains. Le schéma est toujours le même : l'ambassadeur quitte la carrière diplomatique et monte sa propre fondation avec de généreux fonds saoudiens. Ainsi de Walter Cutler, ambassadeur US à Riyad entre 1983 à 1989 : il dirige maintenant le "Meridian International Center", et donne des conférences sur la nécessité de préserver l'alliance saoudienne. Ainsi de Charles "Chas" W. Freeman, Jr., ambassadeur de 1989 à 1992, qui dirige aujourd'hui le très pro-arabe Middle East Policy Council en même temps que son propre cabinet de conseil en lucratives joint-ventures au Moyen-Orient, Projects International, Inc. Ainsi de l'ancien sénateur Wyche Fowler, ambassadeur de l'administration Clinton à Riyad, aujourd'hui président du conseil d'administration du Middle East Institute à Washington, dont 200 000 de dollars du budget (sur un total de 1 million et demi) sont couverts par des donations saoudiennes. Le président du même Middle-East Institute est Edward Walker, un ex-Chargé d'Affaires à l'ambassade de Riyad et ex-assistant Secrétaire d'État chargé du Moyen-Orient. Ainsi de Richard Murphy, ambassadeur à Riyad entre 1981-1983, qui fait entendre la voix de Riyad au Council on Foreign Relations.

"Si les Saoudiens ont la réputation de s'occuper de leurs amis après qu'ils aient quitté leurs postes, vous seriez étonné du nombre de responsables en poste qui deviennent de meilleurs amis de l'Arabie saoudite", a dit un jour avec cynisme le prince Bandar à un ami, qui le répètera au « Washington Post ».

		Le prince Bandar avait déposé dix millions de dollars sur un compte au Vatican que lui avait indiqué le directeur de la CIA de Ronald Reagan

Suivant le même principe, toutes les bibliothèques présidentielles (traditionnellement, un président sortant lègue ses archives et autant d'objets personnels ou historiques qu'il le désire à une bibliothèque historique portant son nom) ont été l'objet de la largesse saoudienne. Le prince Bandar a, par exemple, donné un million de dollars pour la Bibliothèque George Bush (père). L'argent coule à flot pour les bonnes oeuvres préférées des personnalités au pouvoir, qu'il s'agisse de l'organisation anti-drogue de Nancy Reagan, "Just Say No", (un million de dollars du roi Fahd en 1985), de celle de lutte contre l'illettrisme de Barbara Bush (un autre million en 1989), ou du Centre pour les Études Moyen-Orientales de l'université d'Arkansas, 20 millions de dollars quémandés par le gouverneur, un certain Bill Clinton. Certaines "bonnes oeuvres" ont un caractère plus politique : le prince Bandar déposa ainsi dix millions de dollars sur un compte au Vatican que lui avait indiqué le directeur de la CIA de Ronald Reagan, William J. Casey : ils étaient destinés au parti chrétien-démocrate italien pour "lutter contre le communisme". Pour les Contras du Nicaragua, le royaume paiera trois fois plus.

Quand Saddam Hussein envahit le Koweït et menace l'Arabie Saoudite, il semble tout d'abord aux princes saoudiens que leur investissement américain paie enfin. Outre les douceurs cimentant les bonnes relations individuelles, l'accord de base était que l'Arabie saoudite assurait l'approvisionnement pétrolier des États-Unis, tandis que ceux-ci assuraient la sécurité du Royaume. (Dans la consommation pétrolière totale des États-Unis, le pétrole saoudien, qui est descendu de 24% à 14% des importations, n'entre que pour 8% ; mais de tous leurs fournisseurs, l'Arabie saoudite est la seule capable d'augmenter cette proportion en cas de blocus d'un autre producteur : seuls les champs saoudiens, dont les réserves connues sont estimées à 112 milliards de barils, ont une marge de réserve permettant d'ouvrir les robinets immédiatement et d'empêcher ainsi une pénurie.)

		On découvrira que la famille BinLadin est également un investisseur du Carlyle Group, et les administrateurs lui rembourseront discrètement ses parts quelques semaines après le 11 septembre

Le président George H.W. Bush, le Secrétaire d'État James Baker, qui eux-mêmes appartiennent à l'industrie pétrolière texane, sont des héros en Arabie saoudite. Ils reviendront régulièrement à Riyad donner des conférences et entretenir de fructueuses relations avec le régime, particulièrement dans le cadre du Carlyle Group où siège également Baker. Seul embarras récent, on découvrira que la famille BinLadin – l'orthographe différente est volontaire pour qu'il n'y ait pas de confusion avec le fils terroriste – est également un investisseur du Carlyle Group, et les administrateurs lui rembourseront discrètement ses parts quelques semaines après le 11 septembre. Les princes saoudiens ne mesurent pas immédiatement l'effet que la présence de 500 000 soldats "infidèles" (dont des femmes !) produit sur le clergé wahhabite avec lequel ils ont conclu ce que le sénateur McCain appelle aujourd'hui un "pacte faustien". Vivant à l'occidentale à l'intérieur de leurs vastes palais où la Mutawwa n'a pas le droit d'entrer, voyageant à leur guise, les princes ont acheté la paix sociale en abandonnant aux Oulémas toutes les affaires intérieures du Royaume. Ce qui fonctionne tant qu'une hypocrisie de base est maintenue vole en éclats dès lors que ce "rhinocéros" d'un demi-million d'Occidentaux occupe le terrain.

		85 000 personnes, les princes et leur cercle, dont la fortune investie à l'étranger est estimée à un trilliard de dollars – tandis qu'en Arabie saoudite le chômage est de 30%

D'autant que la situation économique du Royaume - et non de ses princes et de leur cercle, soit quelques 85 000 personnes dont on estime la fortune investie à l'étranger à un trilliard de dollars, répartis pour le moment entre les États-Unis pour 700 milliards et l'Europe pour le reste - est bien plus mauvaise qu'il y a une décennie. On a vu que le revenu moyen a fondu : c'est que la population explose, avec le taux de natalité le plus élevé du monde, et une croissance de 4,4% par an que ni les Oulémas, ni le prince Abdallah ne veulent considérer comme un problème. La famille saoudienne moyenne a entre 6 et 7 enfants. 43% des 23 millions de résidents saoudiens (18 millions de citoyens et les travailleurs immigrés) ont moins de 14 ans. On prévoit 33,7 millions d'habitants en 2015. Mais le prince régnant a les yeux rivés sur l'Iran (65 millions d'habitants) et l'Irak (22 millions) qui lui servent de point de comparaison. Et, par ailleurs, les revenus pétroliers, calculés en dollars constants, ont fondu : les tarifs du brut aujourd'hui équivalent au prix du baril au début de 1973. En 1981, les revenus pétroliers s'élevaient à 227 milliards de dollars constants. Pour 2002, on calcule qu'ils atteindront à peine 48 milliards. Le taux de chômage a atteint 30%, et chaque année, les universités saoudiennes produisent plus de 300 000 diplômés qui n'ont aucune envie de tenir les emplois mal payés et mal considérés des travailleurs immigrés. Pour beaucoup, le seul exutoire, c'est la mosquée. Le schéma est un modèle pour créer des frustrations d'autant plus dangereuses qu'il est naturellement interdit de critiquer la famille royale. Il fabrique des Ben Laden à la pelle.

Les diplômés saoudiens encore les plus assurés de trouver un travail sont les étudiants des écoles coraniques wahhabites, que le clergé saoudien expédie à l'étranger pour exporter sa variété extrême de l'islam. Toujours dans le but de se ménager les bonnes grâces des religieux, autant que par conviction musulmane, la charité étant un devoir selon le Coran, les princes et les Saoudiens aisés financent des "bonnes oeuvres" islamiques dont le but avoué est d'étendre l'influence du wahhabisme dans le monde entier. Ce sont ces organisations charitables qui sont aujourd'hui la cible du FBI, et dont les États-Unis réclament le contrôle. Adel al-Jubeir proteste que les autorités saoudiennes ont interrogé plus de 2 000 suspects, en ont emprisonné 100, ont démantelé trois cellules d'Al-Qaïda, et ont gelé 33 comptes bancaires pour un total de 5,5 million de dollars. Al-Jubeir ne fait guère recette à Washington, où on trouve que c'est une goutte d'eau dans la mer, et où surtout le refus des Saoudiens de faire le lien entre leur clergé officiel et l'idéologie des terroristes du 11 septembre provoque la fureur.

À cause de son père, les Saoudiens attendaient beaucoup du Président Bush

Et pourtant, les éléments d'un divorce américano-saoudien prédatent l'attentat contre le World Trade Center : pendant le printemps et l'été 2001, le prince Abdallah avait manifesté une colère grandissante contre ce qu'il voyait comme l'inaction coupable de George W Bush dans le conflit israélo-palestinien. "À cause de son père, les Saoudiens attendaient beaucoup du président actuel", explique le commentateur politique Lawrence F. Kaplan. "Leur fureur était à la mesure de leurs attentes."

Ce n'est un secret pour personne que le prince régnant Abdallah se sent concerné personnellement par ce qu'il voit comme "le martyre" des Palestiniens aux mains de l'armée israélienne. Le prince regarde les mêmes chaînes de télévision par satellite que le reste du monde arabe, etellesmontrentscène après scène de brimades, contrôles routiers, combats entre des tanks et des tireurs palestiniens, opérations de représailles à Gaza et en Cisjordanie. Le prince écrira notamment à G.W. Bush avoir vu, lors d'un barrage de sécurité, une femme palestinienne maintenue à terre par la botte d'un soldat israélien. Furieux, il adresse lettre sur lettre au nouveau président ; suscite un article très critique sur "les complexes d'infériorité de Bush-le-fils" de l'ambassadeur saoudien à Londres, Ghazi Qussaibi, dans le quotidien « Al-Hayat ». Le 24 août, il envoie le prince Bandar à la Maison Blanche, porteur d'un message de 25 pages inhabituellement direct pour le Secrétaire d'État, Colin Powell, et la Conseillère Nationale à la Sécurité, Condoleezza Rice. L'essence : "Nous considérons qu'une décision stratégique a été prise par les États-Unis de soutenir Ariel Sharon à 100%. C'est votre droit mais, dorénavant, la relation privilégiée américano-saoudienne a vécu. Nous protégerons nos propres intérêts dans la région sans prendre en compte ceux de l'Amérique." Et pour bien montrer que cette fois-ci, c'est sérieux, les Saoudiens annulent au dernier moment une réunion sur le programme militaire américano-saoudien entre le chef d'État-major des armées saoudien, le général Salih Ali bin Muhayya, accompagné de 40 officiers supérieurs saoudiens, et les responsables du Pentagone, le 25 août.

Bush père au Prince Abdallah : "Mon fils saura faire le bon choix"

La réponse de George W. Bush ne met que 36 heures à venir : c'est une lettre de deux pages qui, racontent des sources saoudiennes à Washington au "Post", "contient tous les éléments d'un changement radical de la politique américaine au Proche-Orient". Bush y affirme, selon ces sources, son soutien à la création d'un État palestinien ; répond aux inquiétudes humanitaires du prince Abdallah, et s'engage à faire avancer la paix. Les réactions saoudiennes sont excellentes. Leur sentiment est que les pressions de l'été ont payé. Il est vrai qu'Abdallah a trouvé des relais dans l'entourage et la famille même du président. En juin, Brent Scowcroft, l'ancien Conseiller pour la Sécurité Nationale de Bush père - et co-auteur de ses Mémoires -, qui siège aux conseils d'administration de Pennzoil et de Qualcomm, deux sociétés pétrolières avec des intérêts importants à Riyad, avait déclaré publiquement que "les amis arabes de l'Amérique étaient profondément déçus par l'incapacité de la Maison Blanche à modérer Israël". Deux semaines plus tard, lors d'un week-end dans la propriété de George Bush père à Kennebunkport dans le Maine, Scowcroft est témoin d'une scène peu banale : l'ex-président, en sa présence et devant le président actuel, prend son téléphone, appelle directement le prince Abdallah, et l'assure que "[mon fils] est toujours du bon côté[...] vous pouvez compter sur lui pour faire le bon choix."

Et dans les derniers jours de l'été 2001, il semble bien que la Maison Blanche s'apprête à infléchir une politique moyen-orientale que le nouveau président, d'instinct – il a visité Israël et son christianisme évangélique le rapproche de ses traditions – avait jusque-là maintenue dans une inaction plutôt favorable à Israël. Selon Lawrence Kaplan, toute l'équipe travaille sur un discours qui doit être prononcé par Colin Powell, et devrait réinsister sur un État palestinien. Powell et George Tenet, le directeur de la CIA, insistent pour que le Président rencontre Yasser Arafat aux Nations unies. C'est alors qu'arrive le 11 septembre. On sait que l'événement transformera la présidence de Bush fils, tout comme son sentiment de responsabilité. La notion abstraite de terrorisme prend brusquement tout son sens pour un Président qui d'instinct trouve les réflexes en accord avec l'opinion américaine. Les images des Palestiniens dansant de joie à l'annonce des attentats pèseront aussi très lourd. Dans les mois qui vont suivre, la diplomatie saoudienne tentera de reprendre le fil là où l'histoire l'a cassé ; et on verra par exemple l'envoi de l'ex-général Anthony Zinni, un habitué des chasses au faucon avec les princes saoudiens, dans la région. Mais même le "plan Abdallah" du printemps 2002 sera davantage vu comme un effort de relations publiques - l'idée a, après tout, été exprimée à un autre de ces journalistes du « New York Times » brusquement admis à Riyad, Thomas Friedman – que comme une initiative diplomatique conséquente. Aujourd'hui, l'Arabie saoudite a perdu l'initiative politique et diplomatique à Washington. Sur la défensive, elle a bien trop à faire pour se justifier elle-même, malgré le soutien des notables encore nombreux qui acceptent ses prébendes.

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