The President of the United Arab Emirates, Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed, will visit France today, Sunday, in his first visit outside the country since he assumed the presidency.
The French newspaper "Le monde" published an article about this visit, describing the relationship between the two countries as strong and unparalleled.
The article - written by journalists Benjamin Barth and Philip Ricard - explained that the strong partnership between France and the UAE, which began in the seventies during the era of the late founder of the UAE, Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, took during the first term of the current French President Emmanuel Macron an unprecedented dimension. .
Sales vs Silence
The two writers said that the UAE during Macron’s era has not only become a leading client of the French industry - especially the military - but has also become a pillar of France’s work in the Arab and Islamic world, in return for Paris’ complete silence about human rights violations committed by the regime in Abu Dhabi, both inside the country In its military operations, the International Federation for Human Rights questioned - in a report last December - French arms sales to the UAE, some of which are suspected to have been used in Yemen, within the anti-Houthi coalition.
The two writers were interested in the two countries' positions on the Russian-Ukrainian war to shed more light on the relationship between Abu Dhabi and Paris, as they pointed out that France and the UAE are not on the same line;
Macron supports Ukraine and hopes to reach a negotiated solution with Russia once the fighting subsides, while Bin Zayed did not choose his camp and his country refrained within the United Nations from demanding an end to hostilities, in order to preserve its relations with Moscow.
The authors added that while the Europeans decided to impose a ban on Russian oil and fear that Russian President Vladimir Putin will cut off gas supplies completely by winter, the UAE, like other Gulf oil producers, refuses to increase its oil production significantly, and is dependent on the decisions of OPEC.
UAE supplies France with oil
Then the article returns to confirm that in Paris, the UAE will commit to delivering oil, according to conditions that were not specified before the visit, and a French-Emirati business council should be convened, headed by Patrick Pouyanne, CEO of Total, and Sultan Al Jaber, head of the Emirati Oil Company (ADNOC) ;
Various agreements will be signed in the energy, transportation and waste treatment sectors, and a global strategic energy partnership will be put on the right track, in order to identify joint investment projects in the field of nuclear energy and carbon reduction.