Francois Bayrou, who is polling third in the French presidential election, called for a French boycott of the Beijing Olympics if the Chinese fail to rein in the killing by their Sudanese allies in Darfur. China accounts for the bulk of foreign investment in Sudan and supplies the regime with military hardware, all to ensure Chinese access to Sudan’s significant oil reserves. The AP reports that Bayrou made the call at “a pro-Darfur rally” (who isn’t pro-Darfur?) late Tuesday:
I applaud Bayrou for taking such a bold stand–there’s a million reasons to boycott the Beijing games, and Darfur is as good as any of them. But it’s hard to take this stuff seriously coming from the French, who have been working for years to lift the post-Tiananmen, E.U.-wide arms embargo on China. In fact, the French defense minister was in Beijing this week calling for an end to the embargo, “The ban is nothing but a political and psychological thing,” she said. See, it’s not that the French actually want to sell weapons to the Chinese–they object to the ban on principle. Would a Bayrou or Sarkozy administration be any different? We can hope.
