France's history as Arafat ally

By Hugh Schofield
Paris

France was Yasser Arafat's obvious choice in seeking treatment abroad.

A country with top class medical services of course, but more than that - a major player on the international scene that still accords him the full honours as president of the Palestinian Authority.

France has remained a friend of the Palestinian leader and his cause

While other countries, like the UK or the US, pay lip service to his rank, they make little secret of their conviction that the historic leader of the Palestinian movement is a hindrance rather than a help in the search for peace.

But France has remained true.

Just two weeks ago France's Foreign Minister, Michel Barnier, made it quite clear: Nothing, he said, will be done without Arafat or against Arafat.

Relations between France and the Palestinian movement have grown progressively closer over the last three decades, encouraged both by the widespread public sympathy in France for a people living under military occupation and by broader strategic concerns as France seeks influence across the Middle East.

In 1982, it was France that stepped in to extricate Mr Arafat from Beirut when his beleaguered PLO forces were threatened with destruction by the Israeli army.

A few years later, it was France that pushed hardest for the PLO's international recognition after it accepted Israel's right to exist.

In 1992, in a precedent to Yasser Arafat's hospitalisation, France offered medical treatment to another top PLO figure, George Habash.