Paris President Nicolas Sarkozy Puts France at Front of War Effort

President Nicolas Sarkozy may be in down in the
opinion polls, but he has put France boldly in
the forefront of an allied effort to prevent the
decimation of the opposition to Libya’s leader,
Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi.

Mr.Nicolas met with representatives of the Libyan
opposition and recognized it as the country’s
legitimate government. And while the United
Nations Security Council has authorized the
use of force to protect civilians by “all
necessary measures,” the logic of the military
operation would seem to be the ouster of Colonel
Qaddafi.

President motivated by French failures to respond
quickly to the revolutions in Tunisia and
Egypt and pressed by a new foreign minister
and vocal public figures like the writer
Bernard-Henri Lévy, came together with Britain
to drag Europe and the United States toward a
military engagement in the Arab world that key
allies like Washington and Berlin never wanted.