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Frenchies tell Soddy charities to get bent. Really.
The French government has said that it firmly backs the decision by its embassy in Riyadh to refuse visas to the representatives of 13 Saudi charities who were to have taken part in an international conference on humanitarian assistance here last week. âThe decisions were taken for good reasons, and I donât intend to debate the question any further with anybody,â Foreign Ministry spokesman Francois Rivasseau said."So shut yer fudge up!" He said the decision was taken in Paris, not, as previously reported, in Riyadh. According to a communique issued by the Saudi participants who were banned from attending the Paris conference, the measures adopted against charitable organizations such as theirs were âdiscriminatoryâ, especially as they âsought to curtail humanitarian activities.â Depends on whether your definition of "humanitarian activities" includes explosives, of course... They also âcondemned the war mounted against some charity organizations in the name of the so-called war on terror.â Addressing a press conference in Riyadh on Sunday, Saleh Al-Wohaibi, secretary-general of the World Assembly of Muslim Youth (WAMY), described the French move as âunacceptable.â He also noted that the visas were denied by the French Embassy âwithout any explanation.â "I mean, they just tossed them back over the counter and laughed. What could that mean?" Speaking by teleconference from Paris during the packed press conference, Haitham Manna, spokesman of the Paris-based Arab Committee for Human Rights, condemned Paris for âacting under US pressureâ in its decision to refuse visas to officials of the Saudi NGOs. And I, in my turn, as a representative Merkin citizen, applaud the Frenchies for demonstrating that they do, in fact, possess working nads. Feels good to be tougher and more decisive than the Danes and the Norgies and the wooden shoe crowd, doesn't it? Matter of fact, I'm gonna make a note to compliment the Frenchies again next week, assuming Rivasseau hasn't been fired by then. Posted by: Fred Pruitt 2003-01-16 |
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