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MISSION ACCOMPLISHED: Mr Sarkozy (front) disembarking on Sunday at the military airport of Villacoublay near Paris, followed by some of those he helped to free. -- PHOTO: AP
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PARIS - LIKE a political superhero, French President Nicolas Sarkozy swept into Chad and swiftly secured the release of seven Europeans charged with kidnapping children in the central African state.
It was the second time since taking office in May that the flamboyant French leader had intervened in a major international legal dispute.
In July, Mr Sarkozy dispatched his then-wife Cecilia to Libya to win the release of six medics who had been languishing in jail there for nearly a decade.
'Sarkoman', one French daily called him yesterday, in a reference to the cartoon superhero Superman.
French daily Le Monde, meanwhile, depicted him as the black-caped actionman Zorro in a front-page cartoon.
But while his headlinegrabbing antics at the weekend were lauded as a diplomatic coup by supporters yesterday, critics accused the French leader of looking to cash in on a scandal that has strained France's ties with Chad, a former colony, by deflecting attention away from problems at home.
'You cannot run a state pretending you are Zorro,' said senior Socialist parliamentarian Jean-Louis Bianco.
A total of 17 Europeans were arrested last month, accused of trying to fly 103 African children out of Chad to live with families in France.
Zoe's Ark, a small French charity that staged the operation, said it was offering the children a better life, but an investigation by the United Nations has since found out that the children were neither orphans nor from the war-torn region of Darfur in Sudan, as claimed by the charity.
Mr Bianco has called for a parliamentary task force to determine how Zoe's Ark was allowed to stage such an operation.
'There were serious blunders,' he told the popular Le Parisien newspaper, adding that charity representatives had met three times with Foreign Ministry officials and openly discussed their plan to airlift the children.
Since the arrests on Oct25, French public opinion has swung from outrage on behalf of the charity to embarrassment and condemnation.
Le Monde said the Zoe's Ark organisers were 'simplistic amateurs' who falsified documents and put legitimate humanitarian operations in Darfur at risk, while rightwing nationalist leader JeanMarie Le Pen accused the charity of 'pirating' African children.
In a final rebuff, several French families filed a lawsuit against the charity last week, saying the group conned them into paying as much as 3,000 euros (S$6,300) each to finance the bungled airlift.
Veteran humanitarians in France have warned that the international effort to end the bloodshed in Darfur could be damaged.
But the incident has proved to be something of a boon for Mr Sarkozy.
He managed to secure the release of three French journalists and four Spanish flight attendants from among those arrested. Ten others, including six members of Zoe's Ark, remain behind.
'He used his weight to intervene and I can only congratulate him,' said Belgian Foreign Minister Louis Michel.
November is shaping up as the darkest month of Mr Sarkozy's six-month presidency, with mounting trade union resistance to his plans to overhaul France's debt-ridden and sluggish economy.
There is trouble on many fronts, with crippling rail strikes planned, fishermen protesting in Brittany over high gas prices, judges angry at proposed legal reforms, and the government's target of 2 per cent to 2.5 per cent economic growth for the year looking increasingly unrealistic.
But all that was overshadowed by the positive headlines generated from the Chad venture.
'He is a man who likes to take risks,' said Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner.
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ADDITIONAL INFORMATION FROM REUTERS, ASSOCIATED PRESS, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
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