Word: libya
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Sarkozy's pace has wowed almost everyone. At home, he rammed through reform legislation aimed at encouraging work, cutting taxes, fighting crime and clamping down on immigration. Abroad, he helped break the logjam over the European Union's institutional setup, negotiated the freedom of six Bulgarian medics imprisoned in Libya and strengthened Franco-American relations over a vacation lunch with U.S. President George W. Bush...
...public with his relentless pace in attacking challenges both at home and abroad. He has smoothly guided through several contested legal and economic reforms in France; he's meanwhile staged diplomatic coups by brokering an agreement on European Union construction, engineering the freeing of seven Bulgarian medics held by Libya, and improved Franco-American by establishing a warm personal relationship with President George W. Bush. But despite that excellent start, coming months may be considerably more turbulent for both France and its president...
...Even Libya's 2003 decision to scrap its weapons of mass destruction program is sniffed at by some experts. Although the Bush Administration liked to attribute that move to the intimidating effects of its Iraq invasion, some independent experts suggest it was more a case of giving up poorly performing and relatively useless programs in return for almost total diplomatic rehabilitation...
...Skeptics, however, note that Libya's new profile is a product of the same thuggish authoritarian power structure that has ruled the country since 1969. And they suggest that the principles on which Libya is resolving problems sometimes amount to extortion. For example, the release of the Bulgarians - spurious though their convictions may have been - saw still undisclosed donor nations acting on behalf of the E.U. shell out $460 million in damages for the Libyan victims of HIV infection, and also landed Tripoli diplomatic and commercial rewards that include the construction of a nuclear power plant. Even worse, French daily...
...Gaddafi rejects these accusations, insisting that negotiations over what he stresses was "the purely legal issue" of the Bulgarian case resulted from incessant Western pressure to "interfere and shift a legal issue to a political" arena. Still, he acknowledges that resolution of the issue opens the way for Libya gains on the diplomatic and business fronts. Meantime, Gaddafi says he'll continue working on liberalizing and democratizing the dictatorship built by his father since 1969 - a notion scoffed at by human rights organizations. Responding to doubts that the regime could reform to the point of releasing its iron grip...