Libyan President Muammar Gaddafi is to leave France today after a five-day visit, the first in more than three decades. The visit attracted massive media attention and generated heated debate in France and throughout the Arab world. France's President Nicolas Sarkozy was criticised for hosting the Libyan leader on the grounds of his poor human rights record. "Colonel Gaddafi must understand that our country is not a doormat on which a leader, terrorist or not, can come to wipe the blood of his crimes off his feet," France's Secretary of State for Human Rights, Rama Yade, said in an interview with the French newspaper Le Parisien. Others have ridiculed Sarkozy's attempt to please Gaddafi by abandoning protocol and let him pitch his receiving tent in the garden of the Hotel Marigny, the 19th-century mansion that serves as an official guest house for state visits.

Sarkozy was blunt in justifying his welcoming attitude towards the Libyan leader. He hinted that the visit has helped cutting $14.7 billion in deals for arms and nuclear reactors with Libya and, hence, in saving thousands of jobs in the country.

Out of the cold

It was suggested that the visit was in fact Gaddafi's way to bribe the French president to help bring Libya out from the cold. The guest list for a first night dinner in Gaddafi's honour at the presidential Elysee Palace was so indicative. Most of the guests were French business leaders - from Airbus, Dassault, Total and other big companies. After the dinner, two Libyan airlines confirmed orders had been signed to buy 21 Airbus planes worth $4.4 billion. The two sides also signed an accord to develop one or more civilian nuclear reactors.

While Gaddafi has not been blamed for using every means possible to break his isolation and reintegrate his country in the international community, it was in fact Sarkozy who got most of the blame. Some have explicitly criticised the French president for abandoning his pledges "to defend the world's oppressed" and for betraying France's role as the cradle of human rights.

When Sarkozy started off his tenure last May, many have hopped that he would break with policies of past French leaders seen as coddling dictators. Initially, he did. He made Darfur a top diplomatic priority and appointed Bernard Kouchner, the outspoken former leader of Doctors Without Borders, as minister of foreign affairs. Recent foreign policy attitudes have, however, proved the opposite. Sarkozy was not apologetic, nonetheless. His message was clear: "In diplomacy, values matter, but French business interests matter perhaps even more". Gaddafi was so pleased to hear that from Sarkozy when he first met him last July in Tripoli.

Indeed, Gaddafi has made enough concessions to bring about a change in French approach towards Libya. In 2003, he decided to dismantle his nuclear arms programme. The same year he paid $2.7 billion to families of victims of the 1988 Pan Am bombing over Lockerbie, Scotland, then agreed to pay $170 million to the families of the 170 victims of the 1989 bombing of a French UTA passenger jet. Last summer, the Libyan leader ordered the release of five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor who had spent eight years in Libyan jails after being convicted of deliberately infecting 400 children with the virus that causes Aids. The six were freed after mediation by Cecilia Sarkozy, the then wife of Sarkozy, who set the stage for her husband's visit to Libya.

Many have in fact suggested that the visit to Paris was Sarkozy's reward to Gaddafi for his orchestration of the release of the six people. The fate of three million Libyans who have been living under harsh political and economic conditions for the past four decades was not a matter of great concern for Sarkozy, anyway. This is what would Sarkozy and associates call Western pragmatism.

Dr Marwan Al Kabalan is a lecturer in media and international relations, Faculty of Political Science and Media, Damascus University, Syria.