Given the debate about whether the United States should refocus its strategy in Afghanistan and Pakistan more narrowly on hunting down al Qaeda, it's worth looking at what happened immediately after 9/11 when it did precisely that.

Reluctant to destabilise Pakistan, then under former president Pervez Musharraf, the United States turned a blind eye to the training camps and poured money into the country. In return, Pakistan hunted down al Qaeda leaders -- among them alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, captured in 2003. "For the Bush administration, the priority was al Qaeda," writes Bruguiere. "The Pakistan Army and the ISI would focus on this - external - objective, which would not destabilise the fragile political balance in Pakistan."

But for Bruguiere, one of the major lessons was that Islamist militants can't be separated into "good guys and bad guys", since they were all inter-linked. 

This new style of international terrorism was quite unlike militant groups he had investigated in the past, with their pyramidal structures. "After 1994/1995, like viruses, all the groups have been spreading on a very large scale all over the world, in a horizontal way and even a random way," he said. "All the groups are scattered, very polymorphous and even mutant."

Gone were the political objectives which drove terrorism before, he writes, to be replaced with a nihilistic aim of spreading chaos in order to create the conditions for an Islamic caliphate. For the hijackers on the Algiers-Paris flight, their demands seemed almost incidental. "We realised we faced the language of hatred and a total determination to see it through."

Many have argued against this view of international terrorism as a new and nebulous Islamist network without obvious political objectives, which found its most powerful expression in al Qaeda. Just as Lashkar-e-Taiba grew out of rivalry between India and Pakistan over Kashmir, the GIA sprang from anger about the annulment of elections in Algeria that an Islamist group was poised to win. Its attacks on Paris in the mid 1990s were seen as a reprisal for France's role in supporting the government in its former colony. Many of those who support al Qaeda and other Islamist groups are driven by anger over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and other perceived injustices across the Middle East. 

Yet if he is right that the United States and its allies are facing a loose international network of Islamists with no clear pyramid structure, then it would suggest that no amount of drone bombing of al Qaeda and the Taliban leadership of the kind promoted by counter-terrorism supporters would work. Nor would it be enough, alone, to address political grievances at a national level without taking account of a network which operates globally and does not recognise the validity of the nation state. Rather, you would need a sophisticated and comprehensive strategy which went far beyond the kind of focused counter-terrorism first used by the Bush administration.

Browsing through the New Yorker profile on U.S. special envoy Richard Holbrooke, I noticed the same argument was raised there:

"A pure counter-terror approach had, in fact, been the Bush Administration’s policy for years: kill or capture terrorist leaders, with minimal support for political institutions in Kabul and Islamabad," it said. "It had created the mess that (President Barack) Obama inherited, with two countries under threat from insurgents and Al Qaeda’s strength increasing.

"'Al Qaeda doesn’t exist in a vacuum," it quoted former CIA officer Bruce Riedel, who led Obama's first review of strategy, as saying.  “They’re part of a syndicate of terrorist groups. Selective counterterrorism won’t get you anywhere, because the bad guys don’t stay in their lanes.”

(Photos: Jean-Louis Bruguiere; Pervez Musharraf, the Taj in Mumbai, the Marriot in Islamabad)

This article by Mort Rosenblum originally appeared in GlobalPost. For the original article, click here.

PARIS, France — During the 1970s, I dropped in on Monsieur Turpin, a storied Parisian greengrocer and pheasant plucker. His walrus mustache bristled with indignation.

“Those people,” he said, nodding toward two young Americans chewing on baguettes as they passed. “They are walking while they eat.”

Alas, poor Turpin. Today, even the Louvre Museum has a food court for ambulatory grazing. Soon it will include those ubiquitous golden arches. A Big Mona with fries?

What began slowly in the 1970s is now a galloping, likely irreversible, scourge. France is losing its fabled affinity for good food.

In the country where four centuries ago Francois Vatel fell on his sword because the turbot was late for a royal banquet, frozen fish sticks are all the rage.

A glance down any supermarket aisle is evidence enough, with such ersatz food as thin cellophane-wrapped slices of bright yellow processed cheese.

That feeding frenzy of Julia Child lore inspired Americans — first in the 1960s, then again this year — to revive classic French recipes, but here a dwindling number of people bother to simmer a simple sauce.

Turpin used to wake at 4 a.m. to select each tomato he would sell off the trucks at Les Halles, Paris’ then-central food market. He taught me why the family dinner table is the heart of everything French.

Back then I began amassing old volumes and soon realized French food could be hazardous. If my shelves ever give way, I’ll be smashed flatter than a mallet-pounded escalope de veau.

Back in the 1500s, Catherine de Medici brought forks from Italy. Thus armed, French nobles hired cooks to put flatware to good use.

After the Revolution, jobless chefs opened eateries for common folk. Marie-Antoine Careme elevated good cooking to haute cuisine. Later, Auguste Escoffier codified it.

Perusing the books, I found Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin’s classic remark, underlined in red: “The discovery of a new dish means more to humankind than the discovery of a new star.”

I lingered over a 1937 equivalent of Cooking for Dummies by a Cordon Bleu master named Henri-Paul Pellaprat: “La Cuisine Froide, Simple et Pratique” (”Cold Food, Simple and Convenient”).

Opening photos show how to debone a chicken; stuff it with pork, fowl bits, ham, lard and truffles; truss it with surgical knots; and wrap it in a towel for the oven.

Others show the construction of chicken a la Neva in a not-quite-firm gelee and sauce Chaufroid (don’t ask). Nuclear fusion is more simple et pratique.

It is not over yet. Local markets still thrive. Imaginative young restaurateurs add new dishes to the old stalwarts at prices that don’t require a second mortgage.

Down Calorie Alley, side roads along the A6 autoroute from Paris through Lyon, a galaxy of several dozen Michelin stars cluster at flower-splashed inns and posh palaces.

More on food in France by GlobalPost:
Making a statement with chocolate
Love is blind
In Bordeaux, a glass half empty

But even in small backwaters, the new trend is clear. What with jobs and new styles of life, young mothers tend toward packaged plats and le fast food.

When McDonald’s first opened on the Champs-Elysees 30 years ago, a friend of mine heard a French first-timer ask for a Big Mac and add: “Not too well done, please.”

Now that particular McDo is the world’s busiest, one of more than 1,000 across the country. For years, France has been one of the chain’s fastest-growing markets.

In the small Provence city of Draguignan (where two McDos jam at lunch), I talked with Lucie Martin, who spent decades cooking school lunches in the nearby village of Ampus.

“You should see the disgusting garbage they feed the kids,” Lucie said. “It breaks your heart.”
She used to spend hours each day slicing real potatoes for her memorable gratin dauphinois and finding fresh vegetables as the seasons changed.

“Now it’s all flakes and powders from a conglomerate,” she said. “They use fish gravy for meat dishes and meat gravy for fish. There’s no taste so it doesn’t matter.”

Sodexho, the multibillion-dollar company that supplies industrial near-food to schools and institutions in 80 countries, is as French as Michelin or Paul Bocuse.

At the Draguignan market, I queried the usual suspects to see if the Julia Child phenomenon in America might have triggered some sort of renaissance.

Yves Vanweddingen, the brainy goat-cheese guy with an ex-wife from Ohio, pondered the question. “Child,” he said, “like the English word for kid? Never heard of her.”

His customers are aging, and even his own family hustles through meals that were once savored.

“Women have always worked in France,” Yves said, “but they used to work at home and could find time to stir a pot. No longer. Even among those who have time, few care.”

Whether in Provence or Paris, a fresh generation of can-opener kids is trading in a rich culinary heritage for sandwiches and snack food.

Among my favorite old tomes is the collected letters of Madame de Sevigny, the 17th century grande dame who went through goose quills and gigapots of ink at a furious pace.

La Sevigny was at Vatel’s last party. His body was still warm, she reported, when purveyors rushed in with the delayed seafood after a nightlong ride from the coast.

She details the menu of a Christmas dinner for 10 she put together at the Hotel Carnavalet in Paris.

Starters included soups and courts-bouillons, sliced smoked meats and sausages, pork tongues, warm pates and plates of fried this-and-that.

After roasted partridge and pheasant came amusing little larks, thrushes and ortolans. These last are delicate buntings, now nearly extinct. Diners put napkins over their heads to mask the crunching and spitting.

(As Francois Mitterrand neared death in 1996, his last meal with friends featured endangered ortolans; indulgent gendarmes standing guard looked the other way.)

Salmon, trout and carp appeared in elaborate forms along with fresh-water shrimps nestled among crabs in their shells. The desserts go on for pages more.

Most likely, Madame Sevigny did not ask if anyone wanted fries with that.

Top photo:
A member of France’s young Gaullists (RPR political party) (L) tries to distribute samples of French Roquefort blue cheese to customers outside the McDonald’s hamburger franchise on the Champs Elysees July 30. Mal Langsdon/REUTERS

President Obama and the leaders of France and Britain have deliberately raised the stakes in the confrontation over Iran's nuclear programme by dramatising the disclosure that it is building a second uranium enrichment plant. Their shoulder-to-shoulder statements of resolve, less than a week before Iran opens talks with six major powers in Geneva, raised more questions than they answer.

It turns out that the United States has known for a long time (how long?) that Iran had been building the still incomplete plant near Qom. Did it share that intelligence with the U.N. nuclear watchdog, and if not, why not? Why did it wait until now, in the middle of a G20 summit in Pittsburgh, to make the announcement -- after Iran had notified the International Atomic Energy Authority of the plant's existence on Monday, after Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had delivered a defiant speech to the U.N. General Assembly on Wednesday and after the Security Council had adopted a unanimous resolution calling for an end to the spread of nuclear weapons on Thursday?

Is this all part of Obama's choreography to  build international pressure on Iran by getting Russia, in return for the dropping of plans to put a U.S. missile shield in Poland the Czech Republic, to threaten more sanctions against Tehran? A U.S. official says Obama shared the intelligence with Russian President Dimitry Medvedev at the United Nations this week and China had only just been informed. Did Obama try and fail to get Medvedev and Chinese President Hu Jintao -- both in Pittsburgh -- to join the three Western leaders on the podium? Or was his hand forced on timing by the fact that the New York Times had got wind of the Iranian nuclear plant and was set to publish the news on Friday?

The division of labour between Obama, Sarkozy and Brown was striking. The U.S. president sounded stern but his tone was measured. He stressed his commitment to dialogue and negotiation with Iran and to Tehran's right to peaceful nuclear energy. He did not mention sanctions, let alone the possibility of military action. It fell to the Europeans to inject a tone of menace.

Sarkozy accused Iran of defying the international community and taking the world on a dangerous path, and said that unless Tehran changed course by December, there would be tougher sanctions. Brown charged the Islamic Republic with deception and said the international community had no choice but "to draw a line in the sand", and that he did not rule out anything although sanctions were the preferred route. 

Will the latest disclosure on what Iran insists is a peaceful nuclear programme persuade Russia to renounce the sale of advanced S-300 anti-aircraft missiles to Tehran? Will it persuade China, which reaffirmed its scepticism about more sanctions this week and has begun supplying gasoline to Iran, to change its mind? The West sees Iran's dependency on imported fuel as a key vulnerability.

Friday's dramatic announcement was a clear effort to appeal to the world court of public opinion and maximise pressure on Tehran before the Oct. 1 talks, but there is no sign that the Islamic Republic's leaders are even considering yielding on their nuclear ambitions. On the contrary, they seem convinced that the nuclear standoff will enable them to patch over deep internal divisions over the disputed June presidential election by playing the patriotic card.

At his penultimate meeting with governors of the U.N. nuclear watchdog before he steps down in November, Mohamed ElBaradei gave diplomats a reminder of the colourful prose and no-nonsense authority they may soon miss.

   A veteran of the long-running dispute between the West and Iran over its contentious nuclear programme,  the director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency  urged the 35-nation governing body to “put (your) heads together to break the logjam,” on the same day that Tehran submitted a package of proposals to foreign powers.

   He criticised countries – he did not name them but was clearly referring to Israel and France — who have suggested he hid evidence from his latest written report on Iran, pointing undeniably to illicit Iranian research into the making of atomic bombs.

   “Talking about formalities, whether the work plan has been implemented or not,  whether people telling us how to suck eggs, how to write our reports, whether there is a (secret) annex  (on Iran)  — these are not the issues,” he said in a swipe at both sides of the debate.

   “If anybody…has any information we have not shared, that has passed muster, been assessed critically in accordance with our practices, please step forward today. Otherwise, as a preacher would say, you should forever hold your peace,” ElBaradei told delegates.

   “We have, in our reports, always tried not to understate the facts or overstate the facts. We have serious concerns, but we are not in a state of panic. Because we have not seen diversion of nuclear material, we have not seen components of nuclear weapons. We do not have any information to that effect.”

   ElBaradei’s Aug. 28 report lent credence to a Western the intelligence dossier implying military dimensions to Iran’s nuclear activity.  But ElBaradei said caveats were still in order.

   “It’s alleged (studies), the whole question is about accuracy, whether this is real — that is the $64,000 question. That is where we are stuck, we have a limited ability to authenticate,” ElBaradei said. “People talk about assessments. I’m not a rocket scientist,” the 67-year-old lawyer and diplomat said.

   But the agency is losing patience with Iran, he said, for stonewalling IAEA efforts to verify that its nuclear programme is peaceful.

   “I know you have been reacting to others,” ElBaradei told Iranian ambassador Ali Asghar Soltanieh, referring to Tehran’s 2006 decision to stop wider-ranging agency inspections because of U.N. sanctions. “But you are not penalizing others, you are penalizing yourself.”

   Further, ElBaradei prodded Iran to stop evading a U.S.-led big power offer of negotiations that would provide it major trade benefits if it reined in its nuclear activity and made it transparent to non-proliferation inspectors.

   “I’ve told (Iran) I don’t see where the problem is. The U.S. is making an offer without preconditions on that base of mutual respect. Soltanieh has said they are ready to have a comprehensive dialogue. I say the offer by the US can not be refused because it has no conditions attached to it and is based on mutual respect.”

   He also warned  Iran’s strongest Western critics against hyping the Iranian threat by talking about supposed IAEA cover-ups.  “(You are) trying to undermine the agency, (but) in the end (you are) undermining your own credibility. We went through this during the time of Iraq.”

   An outspoken ElBaradei clashed with the former U.S. administration over what he saw as its confrontational policy towards Iraq and Iran. He has said that anyone considering military force against the Islamic Republic would be “bonkers”.

   ElBaradei’s more soft-spoken, reserved successor, Yukiya Amano of Japan, takes over in December.

When France and Germany put years of enmity behind them after World War Two, they made a leap of faith in agreeing to entwine their economies so that war became impossible. With their economies now soldered by the euro, it can be easy to forget how deep their mutual distrust once ran - from the Napoleonic wars to the fall of Paris to Prussia in 1871, to the trenches of World War One and the Nazi occupation of France in World War Two.

As India and Pakistan begin yet another attempt to make peace, they face a similar challenge. Can they put aside years of distrust to build on a tentative thaw in relations?

Many analysts argue that a sketchy roadmap to peace is already available, based on negotiations between advisers to former president Pervez Musharraf and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, in which Pakistani action against militants was matched by Indian moves towards a peace deal on Kashmir. But reviving that roadmap - or for that matter finding another way forward - would require both countries to put aside their past and accept that history is not the only guide to the future.

Indian newspaper, the Business Standard, summarised what many Indian commentators say about past attempts at peace-making - that Indian peace offers have never been matched by a sincere effort by Pakistan to curb Islamist militants. "Pakistan has a history of trying first to get what it wants on the battlefield and, when that fails, to get it at the negotiating table," it says in an editorial. "Indian leaders meanwhile fall into the traps of magnanimity (make a gesture to a smaller neighbour) or gullibility (concede this or that and it will deliver peace)."

Pakistan has its own version of history, seen from the perspective of a smaller country that believed it was cheated of Kashmir at partition in 1947, and then torn in two with Indian help when Bangladesh, then East Pakistan, won independence in the 1971 war.  Both sides accuse the other of breaching the Simla accord which followed that war - the last major peace treaty between the two - Pakistan by sponsoring militants to fight in Kashmir, and India by starting the Siachen conflict in the mountains beyond Kashmir in 1984.

Many other arguments about the past, too numerous to mention, come up every time anybody discusses India and Pakistan until the weight of history becomes an immoveable obstacle to peace.

So how did France and Germany put their history behind them? And are their parallels with India and Pakistan?

Their reconciliation was in part due to a real change in Germany after World War Two, when it renounced a tradition of militarism dating back to its roots in Prussia.  But New Delhi has yet to be convinced that Pakistan has really changed in its attitude to Islamist militants it once nurtured, fearing that while it attacks the Pakistani Taliban in its tribal areas bordering Afghanistan, it will leave alone other groups used against India like the Lashkar-e-Taiba, based in its Punjab province.

In a column in the Daily Times, Pakistani analyst Hasan-Askari Rizvi has an interesting take on this question, suggesting the next few months could be decisive.

"It seems that these (Punjab-based militant) groups are no longer favoured by Pakistan’s security and intelligence authorities. These have been put on hold because the army is busy in the tribal areas and does not want to open a new front in mainland Pakistan. Further, it does not want to seen as taking action against these groups under Indian pressure," he writes. "The Punjab security and intelligence apparatus is now targeting activists of these organisations and monitoring the madrassas that have a reputation for militancy and maintain links with the Taliban. This effort is aimed at destroying their networks, isolating them and discouraging recruitment.

"The next two months will show if Pakistan’s civilian and military authorities will exert more pressure on Punjab-based militant groups and ensure that they do not force a foreign policy situation on Pakistan in its interaction with India. If the role of these groups is neutralised, it will be possible to argue that Pakistan’s counter-terrorism policy has made a historical shift."

Franco-German reconciliation was also encouraged by the United States, which wanted both to work together against a common enemy in the Soviet Union. The United States, keen to see an improvement in relations between India and Pakistan to help stabilise the region as far as Afghanistan, is now quietly trying to persuade them that they both face a common enemy in terrorism.

As for the benefits of greater economic cooperation between India and Pakistan, these are rarely questioned by either country, from increased bilateral trade, to pipelines bringing oil and gas to India from Iran and Central Asia, and to the opening up of transit trade from India via Pakistan into Afghanistan.  So the parallels are there - in the possibility of real change (and the jury is still out on that one), in the backing of the United States, and in the potential economic gains.

Where the parallel falls down is perhaps in vision and leadership. While Franco-German reconciliation was inspired by men who had lived through the horrors of World War Two and saw European integration as the best way to stop history from repeating itself, there is no clear vision of where India and Pakistan might end up. And while France and Germany benefitted from leaders who were powerful enough to push change through, only in India does Prime Minister Singh enjoy a relatively strong position having just won a renewed mandate in a general election, while in Pakistan the civilian government shares power with the Pakistan Army on foreign and security policy.

A much-quoted aphorism is that those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it. But only very rarely do two countries like France and Germany escape their history. Can India and Pakistan do the same?

(Photos: French President Francois Mitterrand and German Chancellor Helmut Kohl in Verdun (1984), Pakistan Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto (undated); Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi with Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau (1983).)

(Please keep comments short and on topic. Those which are overly long, or do not address the post directly, will be deleted.)

Should rappers be able to sing whatever they like in the name of art and should politicians be able to stop them taking to the stage? The question of censorship has jumped back to the fore in France with President Nicolas Sarkozy’s government, in a rather unlikely about-turn, jumping to the defence of a foul-mouthed rapper, while a leading Socialist has tried to muzzle him.

The rapper — pictured in the video above — is called Orelsan, a white, middle-class singer sometimes referred to as “France’s Eminem”, who shot to prominence earlier this year when a video of one of his songs became an Internet hit. Here is a taste of the lyrics (with the worst of the sexual imagery omitted!)

“I hate you, I want you to die slowly, I want you to get pregnant and lose your child … you are just a pig who should go straight to the slaughter house … I am going to get you pregnant and then abort you with a shepherd’s knife.”

The song is old and no longer appears in Orelsan’s stage show, but the controversy lingers.

Organisers of a music festival in La Rochelle in Western France said this week they were forced to drop him from their line up after a local Socialist bigwig, Segolene Royal, threatened to cut their public subsidy if he appeared.

Royal was the Socialist party candidate in the 2007 presidential election, and news that she might have pulled the plug on Orelsan fuelled immediate outrage in the centre-right government, which accused her of “intolerable” interference.

(Photo: Segolene Royal, 1 May 2009/Regis Duvignau)

“Orelsan talks about unrequited love in terms that I wouldn’t use … but he has the total right to do so,” said Culture Minister Frederic Mitterrand, the nephew of former Socialist President Francois Mitterrand.

He went on to compare Orelsan to Rimbaud, the bad boy of French 19th century poetry. “Rimbaud wrote much more violent things that went on to become classics.”

Mitterrand only took over as culture minister in a cabinet reshuffle last month. His predecessor, Christine Albanel, took a very different line back in March when she asked Internet sites to block the offending song. “Freedom of expression stops when incitement to violence and sickening hatred begins,” she said at the time.

(Photo Frederic Mitterrand, 24 June 2009/Benoit Tessier)

So what has changed? Is it that a man is now in charge of Culture in France, is it that a prominent Socialist tried to intervene or is it that France has suddenly become much less tolerant of any whiff of censorship?

    French President Nicolas Sarkozy opens a jack-in-the-box  decorated with the EU flag, a boxing glove springs out and  knocks out the teeth of Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan .

     “No more empty promises to Turkey,” a snickering Sarkozy  says.  The cartoon in daily Milliyet darkly panders to what most  Turks feel these days are the European Union’s true intentions  towards Turkey’s EU quest — no matter how many obstacles thrown  at its wheels Turkey surmounts on the long and winding road to  Brussels, it will ultimately be denied entry at the gates of the  promised land .

    A survey last weekend by Bahcesehir University in Istanbul  showed that 80 percent of Turks believe that even if Ankara  meets all political and economic requirements for EU accession,  the EU will still not accept it as a member.

    The study was published ahead of the June 4-7 European  Parliament vote, in which Turkey’s bid to join the EU has become  an election issue in some EU countries to the chagrin of the  Turks, always sensitive about their self-image in the West .

     Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel and Sarkozy of France  have used the campaign trail to reiterate their opposition to  Turkey’s full EU membership, saying Ankara instead should be  given a “privileged partnership”; Sweden’s Foreign Minister Carl  Bildt and his British counterpart David Miliband joined voices  to stress the “strategic interest” of accepting Turkey into the  bloc .

     Election issues can be notoriously short-sighted, but at the  heart of the debate is the very idea of Europe and where it  should draw its borders as it strives to tackle new challenges  such as globalisation, climate change, nuclear proliferation,  energy dependency, the rise of China and other powers or  security .

     Is Turkey — a predominantly Muslim country of 72 million  people with a per capita income of only one-third that of the  27-nation bloc — too poor and too culturally different to fit  into the EU? Do “Little Europeans” from Paris to Berlin, aghast at the  prospect of a EU bordering Iran, Iraq and Syria really want a  fortress and “Christians-only” Europe? Can Europe afford losing Turkey?

     Enlargement-fatigue and a Lisbon Treaty in intensive care  have narrowed politicians’ sights, but the wider question over  the future of Europe will not go away.

     Ankara’s lack of progress in key areas such as clipping the  power of the military and expanding freedom of expression since  accession negotiations began in 2005 has consumed much of the  debate of late. But again, what are four years in a country  which has changed beyond recognition since the 1980s by throwing  open its markets to foreign investors, shattering long-held  taboos and democratically electing former Islamists as president  and prime minister without witnessing a military coup?

     Those who back Ankara’s full membership say Turkey has  enormous benefits for the bloc — it is a secular democracy with  a vibrant market economy, NATO’s second-largest army, a  strategically positioned energy hub between the West and the  East, and a rising regional power with bridges to the Muslim  world .

     Those against it shudder at its sheer size — by 2050  Turkey’s fast growing population will reach 100 million –, are  troubled by its authoritarian ways, awed by its Islamic identity  and horrified at its treatment of minorities and news of honour  killings that feed the view of the “barbarian Turk” .

     Turks insist that joining Europe is the culmination of  founder Mustafa Kemal Ataturk’s drive to modernise the country and say Europe without a city like Istanbul will never fully be Europe.

     Brussels says banning Youtube, prosecuting Nobel laureate  writer Orhan Pamuk for “insulting the Turkish nation” and  meddlesome generals are incompatible with European values of  tolerance, freedom and rule of law .

     In any case, if Turkey is to join Europe — there are more  than 80,000 pages of European laws and regulations before that  happens — it would take decades rather than years. By then both  Europe and Turkey will be quite different from what they are  today. Sarkozy and Merkel will be long gone from the stage .

     History of course carries its weight. After all, Ottoman  Turks stormed twice as conquerors into Europe, hammering at the  very gates of Vienna, and European powers occupied large parts  of today’s Turkey after the collapse of the empire .

     The survey by Bahcesehir University also highlighted Turkey’s own ambivalence toward Europe — aspiring to be a part  of it but harbouring dark suspicions towards it as well .

     Three out of four Turks believe the EU is trying to dismember Turkey and 81 percent believe the bloc’s goal is to spread Christianity. However, 57 percent said they wanted full  EU membership for Turkey .

     But again, can Turkey afford to lose Europe?  

For days now Britons have been regaled with newspaper stories detailing the dubious expense claims of their Members of Parliament.

The Honourable Members, it seems, have been charging for everything from a few thousand pounds for clearing a moat to a few pence for a new bath plug. An outraged nation has risen almost as one to denounce its greedy lawmakers.

But while the various schemes devised by the members of the Mother of Parliaments are ingenious in the way they exploit the generous rules laid down by the "Fees Office" of the House of Commons, they do lack a certain scale.

When it comes to separating the state from its money, politicians in Africa, for example, show none of the inhibitions of their British colleagues.

In Nigeria this month two senior lawmakers investigating corruption in the power sector were detained in connection with a scam involving electricity contracts. How much money involved? $41 million.

In March, Nigerian police arrested a former state governor who is under investigation for misappropriation of funds totalling $170 million.

Enormous sums of money compared with the thousands of pounds involved in Britain, but still small change compared to the billions stolen by Zaire's Mobutu Sese Seko and Nigeria's Sani Abacha.

It's still not clear what the consequences of the British case will be.

But perhaps there are signs that African politicians cannot always rely on a blind eye being turned on their financial affairs.

The prosecutor's office in Paris is trying to block an investigation into corruption allegations against three African presidents who have amassed luxury homes and fleets of cars in France.

Omar Bongo of Gabon, Denis Sassou-Nguesso of Congo and Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo of Equatorial Guinea (who all deny wrongdoing) may never appear in a French court.

But anti-graft campaigners argue that the case does at least mean that the leaders' usually secret financial affairs are now being discussed in public.

Before Nicolas Sarkozy was elected president in 2007, he made clear he wanted to break with France’s old way of doing business in Africa – a cosy blend of post-colonial corruption and patronage known as “Françafrique” that suited a fair few African dictators and the French establishment alike.

He has made the same point during his past visits to the continent.

“The old pattern of relations between France and Africa is no longer understood by new generations of Africans, or for that matter by public opinion in France. We need to change the pattern of relations between France and Africa if we want to look at the future together,” Sarkozy said in South Africa early last year.

This week he is back in Africa for a visit on which France’s business interests play a very prominent role.

In the Democratic Republic of Congo, Sarkozy called on the country to work with former foes Rwanda and Uganda in a partnership based on exploiting the region’s natural riches.

Another stop was in neighbouring Congo Republic to see President Denis Sassou Nguesso, an old friend of France who seized power in the oil-producing state in 1979, lost it in a 1992 election and then returned five years later via a civil war. In the past, Congo Republic symbolised as much as anywhere the old style of diplomacy.

After the Congos, the schedule takes Sarkozy to Niger, a particularly important country for nuclear power dependent France because of the uranium mining interests of French state-controlled nuclear energy group Areva. It is building a huge new mine in Niger, where the government is fighting Tuareg rebels who demand more of the region’s wealth.

Sarkozy is doing nothing different from other world leaders by bringing along a bevy of executives keen to sign deals. France also faces a great deal of competition from China and others in what it used to treat as its “backyard” and is keen to ensure it does not lose out.

In Brazzaville, Sarkozy repeated the pledge he made a year ago to renegotiate all France’s accords with African countries and to make sure they are published in full. But the pace of progress so far has raised questions over how determined France is to break with the past. What do you think the prospects for change are? Is it important?

France's President Nicolas Sarkozy with Republic of Congo President Denis Sassou Nguesso in Brazzaville March 26, 2009. REUTERS/Philippe Wojazer

Organisers have postponed a conference of Nobel peace laureates in South Africa after the government denied a visa to Tibet's spiritual leader the Dalai Lama, who won the prize in 1989 - five years after South Africa’s Archbishop Desmond Tutu won his and four years before Nelson Mandela and F.W. de Klerk won theirs for their roles in ending the racist apartheid regime.

Although local media said the visa ban followed pressure from China, an increasingly important investor and trade partner, the government said it had not been influenced by Beijing and that the Dalai Lama's presence was just not in South Africa's best interest at the moment.

The conference, ahead of the 2010 World Cup, had been due to discuss how to use soccer to fight xenophobia and racism.

"We stand by our decision. Nothing is going to change. The Dalai Lama will not be invited to South Africa. We will not give him a visa between now and the World Cup," said government spokesman Thabo Masebe.

Whatever the reasoning, it angered the Nobel laureates in a country which has prided itself as a model of democracy and human rights since the end of apartheid in 1994.

Nelson Mandela’s grandson, Mandla, one of the conference organisers said the rejection was tainting South Africa’s democratic credentials.

"The government needs to review its decision and come to the party," said Mandela, set to become a parliamentarian with the ruling African National Congress after the election in April.

Allowing a visit by the Dalai Lama could certainly have made relations with Beijing more difficult. Ties between France and China were badly strained after French President Nicolas Sarkozy met him in December, when France held the European Union presidency.

But banning the Dalai Lama has also created a storm that South Africa was unlikely to have wanted either.

Was the ban the right thing to do?