Unsuccessful mediation: Macron seeks to be a peace mediator, but his initiatives are controversial

Emmanuel Macron, Vladimir Putin

© APA | Emmanuel Macron, Vladimir Putin

# 15 November 2022 13:16 (UTC +04:00)

An article dedicated to the failure of French President Emmanuel Macron's mediation on a number of global issues has been published.

An article by David Sadler on the website globeecho.com is titled "Macron Seeks To Be A Peace Mediator… But His Initiatives Are Controversial".

The article reads:

"French President Emmanuel Macron asserts that “peace is possible” in Ukraine, as in a number of other conflicts, trying to create the image of a president – a mediator who has achieved many “diplomatic successes”, although his ambitions remain, in reality, to a large extent controversial.

At the Paris Peace Forum, last Friday, the French president reaffirmed his foreign policy line, after his speech at the “Cry for Peace” summit of religions in Rome last October, and his speech against “the division of the world” at the United Nations last September.

“He is looking for a mediating role,” former French ambassador to China, Britain, and Russia, Sylvie Berman, told AFP. She added that he “liked it” and that he “likes to search for agreement, for a compromise.”

This is especially so since, since the legislative elections that took place in June, which led to a relative majority for the presidential camp, the margin of maneuver it has on the national scene has diminished.

During the Paris forum, Macron tried to revive the faltering dialogue between President Nicolas Maduro’s camp and his opponents, to get Venezuela out of its political impasse, but no breakthrough has been announced now.

This last file is on a long list of issues, as confirmed by the president’s entourage.

One day in October, the Elysee Palace organized a meeting of journalists devoted to the conflict in Ukraine. However, at its beginning, an advisor to the president elaborated on the “successes” that the French president “achieved, one after the other,” and “worth” highlighting his “role.”

From the tension between the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Rwanda, to an agreement between Bulgaria and North Macedonia, including his “intervention” to facilitate an Israeli-Lebanese understanding, the message was clear: Emmanuel Macron delivers results for peace.

However, these “successes” are limited, as appears from the sharp setback in Rwandan-Congolese relations, or Paris’s limited initiatives in the war between Armenia and Azerbaijan, despite mediation attempts that Baku and Moscow do not want, according to a diplomat from the region.

It is clear that the French president is focusing his efforts on the war that Russia is waging in Ukraine since the beginning of the year.

He “takes charge” of continuing to talk with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, with whom other Western leaders, led by US President Joe Biden, cut all bridges.

But he expresses another opinion, including in the European camp, by stressing the need to eventually reach a “peace” negotiated “around a table” with the “enemy of today,” “when the Ukrainian people and their leaders decide that, and on the terms they decide.”

These calls for negotiation greatly upset Ukraine.

Sylvie Berman said that Emmanuel Macron is “right not to give up”. She added, “It is important to maintain a channel, and those who say (we should not talk with Putin) this is illogical,” noting the benefit of such a dialogue on some issues, such as the access of international inspectors to nuclear power plants threatened in the conflict, or the export of grain.

However, the former diplomat believes that the French president’s mission is “very complicated”, especially since his Turkish counterpart, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, is “not his best friend” and seems in a better position to play an effective mediating role.

And the special advisor at the Montaigne Research Institute (liberal), Michel Duclos, expresses a harsher opinion about Macron, who “believed for a very long time that his personal relationships and his ability to persuade would allow him to push Putin to change his position.”

This former ambassador said, “This is an honorable matter, but it is clear that it is an error in the analysis,” explaining that this makes France vulnerable to a decline in the confidence of a number of European allies, such as Poland and the Baltic states, as well as Washington, in it.

Michel Duclos believes that the President of the French Republic enjoys “greater credibility” when he calls, as he did on the platform of the United Nations General Assembly, for a “new contract between the North and the South” and urges world leaders to reject Russian “imperialism”."

#
#

THE OPERATION IS BEING PERFORMED