Honors and discretion for visit of Mohammed Ben Zayed Al Nahyane, president of United Arab Emirates

It was the first visit to France of the President of the Emirates since he succeeded his late half-brother, mid-May. He dined at the Palace of Versailles with Emmanuel Macron.

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The dinner at the Grand Trianon, in the park of the Palace of Versailles, wanted the highlight of the state visit of the President of the United Arab Emirates (Water), Mohammed Ben Zayed Al Nahyane, in France. It is here that Emmanuel Macron welcomed his host, after a day led drum beating in a Paris striking Paris, Monday July 18. Round tables had been set up for the occasion sheltered from the peristyle, the colonnades gallery located between the two wings of this pink marble palace, which allows you to go from the courtyard to the garden. At a time when the sun has eclipsed behind the trees in the estate, leaving a semblance of freshness, more than a hundred guests in the business world, culture and sciences were gathered, a sign of the density of exchanges between the two countries.

It was the first visit to France of the President of the Emirates since he succeeded his late half-brother, Khalifa Ben Zayed Al Nahyane, mid-May. A little earlier in the day, Emmanuel Macron had already multiplied the protocol honors to highlight the proximity he demands with his counterpart, already received in September 2021, at the Château de Fontainebleau. On the sidelines of a head-to-head interview at the Elysée, then a lunch, he had given Mohammed Ben Zayed Al Nahyane the badge of the National Order of the Legion of Honor. He also offered him a 1535 edition of the map of the Arabian Peninsula and the Gulf, as represented by the German geographer Lorenz Fries. A sort of geopolitical wink.

intensified exchanges

Exchanges between Paris and Abu Dhabi, started in the 1970s, at the time when France’s relatively balanced positioning on the Israeli-Palestinian file made it attractive in the eyes of the Gulf monarchs, intensified in the 1990s, under the presidency of Jacques Chirac, admirer of the Sheikh Zayed, the founding president of the water. France has a military base in Abu Dhabi, used, among other things, to repatriate its nationals of Afghanistan during the precipitous withdrawal of American troops, almost a year ago. Or to strike the Islamic State in Syria.

During the first term of Emmanuel Macron, the exchanges between the two countries intensified, in particular in the defense sector, to the chagrin of human rights defenders. At the forefront of the arrival of “Mbz” in Paris, the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) has published an open letter in order to draw attention to the fate of opponents Emiratis imprisoned , whose dissident Ahmed Mansour, placed in isolation since 2017.

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/Media reports.