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D-Day wrangle: Sarkozy ignores Queen in rush to please US president
President Nicolas Sarkozy is a big fan of the United States and makes no secret of his craving for the limelight. Enter Barack Obama, the perfect guest.
- AP
- Published: 23:00 June 2, 2009
Paris: President Nicolas Sarkozy is a big fan of the United States and makes no secret of his craving for the limelight. Enter Barack Obama, the perfect guest.
Obama will be the star visitor at Saturday's commemoration ceremony marking the 65th anniversary of the D-Day Allied landings in Normandy that helped turn the tide of the Second World War. And the ambitious Sarkozy may be hoping some Obama lustre will rub off on him.
So eager was Sarkozy to ensure Obama's attendance at the ceremony that he didn't bother to invite Queen Elizabeth II - Britain's head of state - even though British troops stormed Normandy alongside Americans, and the queen herself served in the war. His spokesman said it was a "Franco-American event".
The monarch's subjects are in a huff over the perceived snub. Even the White House says it wants the queen to be present and White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said on Monday that Washington officials are working on it.
Even before Obama, Sarkozy was enamoured of the United States. His nickname is 'Sarko l'Americain'. When taking office in May 2007, he pledged to heal a relationship between Paris and Washington torn asunder by the Iraq war, which France stolidly opposed.
Just months after his election, Sarkozy took a most un-French presidential vacation - to New Hampshire with a side trip to Kennebunkport, Maine, for lunch with then-president George W. Bush at the family compound. It was a risky move given Bush's unpopularity in France.
Now Sarkozy's sights are on Obama. Unlike some other Western leaders, Sarkozy has yet to be invited to Washington by Obama. No matter.
He set about luring Obama to France. He tried unsuccessfully to get Obama to Normandy in April, squeezed between a G-20 meeting of leaders in London and a Nato summit in France and in Germany.
He said in a radio interview on May 8, when France marks the end of the Second World War, that he was "very touched that President Obama ... accepted to come to France" for the June 6 anniversary of D-Day.
France contends an invitation went out to the British and they can choose whom to send. "There will be other 6ths of June," Luc Chatel, French government spokesman, said last week.
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