Sarkozy Hopes 2009 Would be Decisive for Lebanon
French President Nicolas Sarkozy said Friday that Lebanon was rebuilding itself slowly and hoped 2009 would be decisive for the country.
"Lebanon is rebuilding itself step-by-step on the road to peace and reconstruction," Sarkozy told foreign diplomats based in Paris.
"I hope that 2009 would be a decisive year for Lebanon which has made progress in internal stability and a change it is relation with Syria in the past months," An Nahar daily quoted Sarkozy as saying.
He told diplomats that Lebanese President Michel Suleiman would make an official visit to Paris mid March.
During Suleiman”s visit, "France will stress … that it stands by all the Lebanese," the French president said.
On Iran, Sarkozy said Tehran”s nuclear enrichment program has no civilian purpose and is dragging it into a dangerous confrontation with the international community.
"The moment is coming when Iran”s leaders will have to make a choice," he warned, as part of an annual foreign policy address.
"Either they provoke a serious confrontation with the international community or, and this is what France wants, we come to a negotiated deal in these talks which have been going on for, mark this, five years."