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Copyright © 1999, by the Middle East Data Project, Inc. All rights reserved.
French police rounded up activists from the opposition Mujahedin-e Khalq on the eve of President Khatami's landmark visit to France, in an effort to prevent demonstrations from marring a visit where extensive trade agreements were signed.
The pre-dawn raids, which began on October 26, the day before Khatami arrived, were accompanied by stepped up controls at France's international borders. French immigration police turned away all Iranian nationals except for those in Khatami's official delegation, and carried their diligence to such an extreme that an American born in Iran and a group of Iranian-born Canadians were also turned back at the border.
Normally, France cannot control visitors arriving from other European Union countries because of the Schengen agreement, which abolished internal border controls within the EU. But Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Anne Gazeau-Secret revealed on Oct. 26 that Paris had asked Italy and Germany to suspend the Schengen rules from October 23 to 29 because of the Khatami visit.
Despite the vigilance, protesters greeted Khatami at virtually every step of his three day visit, the first ever by an Iranian President since the Revolution, pelting his car with eggs, tomatoes, and yellow paint. Khatami met with President Chirac, hosted a breakfast with forty prominent business leaders that led to the announcement of $771 million in Iranian purchases of French industrial goods, gave a speech at UNESCO, and even visited the Pantheon, where he lay a wreath on the tomb of French writer Emile Zola, famous for his defense of Captain Alfred Dreyfus, a French Jew falsely accused of giving military secrets to the Germans in 1894 whom Zola defended in his famous "J'accuse" open letter in 1898.
The speech at UNESCO, initially scheduled for Wednesday, was twice rescheduled because French police feared protesters would block Khatami's arrival at the UN building in Paris. UNESCO was surrounded by police on Friday when Khatami finally spoke. The French temporarily closed three of the busiest Metro stations during the speech - Concorde, Invalides, and Champs-Elysées - in an effort to prevent the arrival of protesters. Despite that, Khatami's car was struck with a ripe tomato by a woman later identified as Sabine Modig, 40. She was hauled away by police after pounding her fist on the car. She had gained entry to the grounds with an official badge identifying her as a UNESCO delegate from Niger.
The protests were not limited to headline-grabbing efforts by the Mujahedin. A group of French intellectuals, including France-Libertés (an association headed by Danielle Mitterrand, widow of the former French President François Mitterrand), criticized the French government for hosting "the president of a government which quells social movements... oppresses women... hunts intellectuals... holds the freedom of expression in ridicule... harasses religious minorities... and is the symbol of a bloody episode of contemporary History."
Downgraded: Because of Iranian government protests over French plans to hold an official banquet in his honor, where wine would be served, Khatami's trip had been rescheduled from earlier this year and was downgraded from a state visit to an official visit. Official visitors do not receive the state banquet. The downgrading also meant that no Iranian flags were flown from French lampposts, as had been the case just days earlier, when Chinese President Jiang Zemin preceded Khatami to Paris.
In fact, Khatami appears to have been invited not by the French government, but by outgoing UNESCO director general Federico Mayor, the French Press Agency reported from Paris (AFP 10/27).
During his UNESCO speech, Khatami criticized the United States for attempting to impose "neocolonialism" on the rest of the world. "The New World Order and the globalization that certain powers are trying to make us accept.... in which the cultures of the entire world are ignored, looks like a kind of neocolonialism," he said.
At a subsequent news conference, he also had harsh words for the French. Responding to a question about repression of Baha'is in Iran, Khatami countered by asking why five million Muslims living in France were not recognized as distinct ethnic group. He urged France to make Islam an official religion, something the secular French state has not done with any faith. And he rejected accusations of Iranian government repression of the Baha'is, calling them "the product of extensive lobbies for these groups internationally."
Khatami also seized the occasion to blast Israel and reassert the Iranian government's opposition to the Middle East peace process. "How can we expect lasting peace for millions of people living and dying in camps while others occupy their ancestral land," he asked, referring to the Palestinian Diaspora. "Any peace must be based on justice otherwise those who suffer oppression will revolt," he added.
(Israel and Palestinian Authority delegations began final status negotiations early this month, following the Oslo summit. Israel has made it clear it will not grant a "right of return" to the Palestinian Diaspora, believed to be as numerous as Israel's Jewish population, but will instead discuss the rights of refugees to some form of compensation. So far, Israel has not insisted on similar compensation for Jews who fled to Israel after 1948 from Arab countries and who also lost their property as a result of the Arab-Israeli conflicts, although some groups in Israel are beginning to raise the issue).
The deals: Khatami's visit would not have been complete without the deals, all $771 million of them. They included:
• The purchase of four Airbus A-330 passenger jets, for $480 million. Until now, the United States has managed to block the sale of civilian airliners to Iran Air because of the 10% de minimus ruling regarding U.S. content. Airbus planes normally include close to 30% U.S. content, between avionics systems and the engines, which are made by CFM, a joint venture between Snecma and General Electric. To get around that ruling, Airbus Industrie offers aircraft with British-built Rolls Royce engines and European avionics. It was not announced what solution was found for the four planes.
• The purchase of 100 diesel-electric locomotives, for $201 million, from Alsthom, the maker of the French TGV high-speed train. The first 20 locomotives will be assembled in France. Alsthom agreed to an extensive technology sharing agreement as part of the deal, and will help Pars Wagon set up a facility to assemble the remaining 80 locomotives in Iran from kits.
• Iran also announced it was buying 10 airport radar sites from France for $90 million.
All three deals have been in the works for some time. In fact, the radar purchase was first announced in August 1998 by the head of the Civil Aviation Organization, Ali Shahcheraghi, shortly before his death in a plane crash inside Iran. Shahcheraghi said the French had already begun building the ten radar sites at airports around the country, and would also supply two central data control centers as part of a nation-wide Communication Navigation Surveillance and Air Traffic Management System (CNS-ATM) intended to link airports and air traffic control radar nation-wide using satellite communications. At the time, he said the deal would cost Iran $80 million, not $90 million. (Cf. "Iran attends DPRK test," TIB 9/8/98).
Iranian newspapers speculated prior to the Khatami visit that France was preparing to make a $1.5 billion loan to Iran for the purchase of French goods, but no such agreement was announced during the visit.
French Foreign Minister Hubert Védrine was thrown on the defensive in the National Assembly the day Khatami arrived in Paris, because of Iran's human rights record and especially its arrest of 13 Iranian Jews earlier this year. "I don't see how democracy will progress more quickly in countries that buy Boeing rather than Airbus jets," he retorted.
In Iran, Khatami's visit got mixed reviews. The pro-reform press prominently displayed photographs of Khatami's UNESCO appearance on the front pages. Sobh-e Emrouz said Iranians felt proud to see their president address UNESCO. "This feeling of pride and dignity is exactly what most Iranians have been yearning for since the early months of the 1979 revolution," it said.
The reformist Payam-e Azadi had harsh words for those criticizing President Khatami's "moderate" language while in France. The paper underscored Khatami's true agenda, which is to attract Western investment to Iran. Khatami's critics "should take into account that in order to attract foreign investors, save Iran's ailing economy and find an appropriate position on the international landscape, we must stop repeating our old statements and start the reform process," the paper said.
But the hard-line daily Abrar said Iran and Europe could still not trust one another. "One must assert that the high wall of mistrust between Iran and Europe has not fully crumbled," it said in an editorial. "The Europeans are still unable to understand the political and social developments and currents in Iran, and their misunderstanding and one-dimensional interpretations have led to the adoption of unfriendly policies," the daily said.