Paris: December, it seems, is a great time to shop in Paris.

Muammar Gaddafi, the leader of Libya, came to town this week for a holiday shopping spree, and French President Nicolas Sarkozy was an eager merchant.

To give a more authentic Middle Eastern bazaar effect to the whole affair, Gaddafi set up a Bedouin tent in the gardens of the official guest residence, the 19th-century Hotel Marigny, next to the presidential Elysee Palace.

Human rights groups and politicians lit into Sarkozy, accusing him of selling French principles down the river and seeming to ignore Gaddafi's poor human rights record in exchange for $14.7 billion (Dh53.95 million) worth of deals.

The contracts provide for Libya to buy 21 Airbus jetliners, at least one civilian nuclear reactor, more than a dozen Rafale fighter jets, 35 helicopters, armoured vehicles, air defence radar gear and other useful items.

Realpolitik

"Some say that Gaddafi's attitude in his country has not changed, that he does not respect human rights and still supports terrorism," said Khadija Mohsen-Finan, a North Africa specialist at the French Institute for International Relations in Paris.

Others, she said, accuse Sarkozy of being "a cynic with his realpolitik and his willingness to make money from Libya."

But Mohsen-Finan said that in her view, Gaddafi gave up "the core of his diplomacy" when he relinquished his weapons of mass destruction and renounced terrorism. And Sarkozy has put commercial interest at the top of his agenda, she added, after realising that France was late to invest in Libya in comparison with Germany and Italy. "These two new types of diplomacy will redefine a new link between France and Libya," she said.

The French government said it was all business as usual. "Libya has become a client like any other," presidential spokesman David Martinon told LCI television. Some analysts said that doing business with dictators was business as usual for the French.

Sarkozy has also been disparaged recently for signing $30-billion worth of deals on a trip to China while saying little about that country's rights problems.