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A welcome mat for tyrants?

Visits of political tyrants, or those whose actions are repulsive to any norms of humanity, decency or justice - think, Robert Mugabe, Gadhafi and the same ilk - to foreign countries raises a vexed question. Should the West receive these people even if they are, in there own way, somehow or other "elected" representatives of their country?

The issue was highlighted the other day with the visit of Moammar Gadhafi of Libya to Paris. In reading this piece from truth.dig remember that the Gadhafi's visit was "sweetened" by his signing agreements to purchase more than $14 billion in French products, from the Airbus to a nuclear reactor (for water desalination) to advanced jet fighters.

"France is seething over the official visit of Moammar Gadhafi to Paris—a landmark affair, considering that President Nicolas Sarkozy’s invitation was the first such offer from a Western leader since Gadhafi’s notorious rupture with the West in the 1980s.

Unfortunately, the arrival of the Libyan tyrant happened to coincide with World Human Rights Day. But the predictable political uproar in Paris raises as many questions about the hypocrisy of those who criticize Sarkozy for playing host to Gadhafi as it does about the morality of the event itself. In fact, the issue resonates far beyond the borders of France.

Not only was Gadhafi received formally—if coolly—at the Elysees Palace, but the onetime international pariah, whose secret services blew a couple of packed airliners out of the skies, was invited to address the French National Assembly—an event that the majority of assembly deputies boycotted. He was even allowed to pitch his heated Bedouin tent in the garden of the mansion where foreign dignitaries are traditionally put up."

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