Emmanuel Macron was caught up in football news during a visit this Wednesday to the Jordanian archaeological site of Jerash, the "Pompeii of the Middle East", on his 45th birthday.
“Sorry for the Worldcup (sorry for the World Cup)”, launched an English tourist, dumbfounded to meet him at the bend of an alley, before asking him for a selfie.
"I'm sorry about Brexit.
We didn't want it, many of us (many of us did not want it),” said another British tourist, a few meters further.
The site, which extends from the Hellenistic period to the Umayyads, offers an exceptional set of temples, monumental staircases, theaters and alignments of columns which also earned it the nickname of the “Thousand Columns” site.
The Egyptian lyrical singer Farrah El-Dibany, who sang the Marseillaise on Sunday for the France-Argentina final and who accompanied the president on his subsequent trip, sang a few notes from Carmen in the theater dedicated to poetry.
Promoting a resolution of the crises in the Middle East
Before returning to Paris, the French president had a meeting with King Abdallah II of Jordan during which the two men welcomed the “success” of the regional conference organized the day before to support Iraq.
France and several regional players called on Iraq on Tuesday, during this summit, to move away from the Iranian axis in order to promote a resolution of the crises that are shaking the Middle East.
The Baghdad II conference was held on the shores of the Dead Sea, after a first edition in the Iraqi capital in August 2021 at the initiative of Emmanuel Macron and Iraq.
King Abdallah also indicated that he had discussed with the French head of state "the challenges in Syria and Lebanon as well as the problems" encountered by the peace process in the Middle East.
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