Mr President,
As a French citizen with a deep love of your beautiful country, I am delighted that you are today, on our Fête Nationale, honouring our nation with your presence. Last night, my wife and I very much enjoyed seeing and hearing you on our television when you gave some wise answers to direct questions put by a leading interviewer.
As we all know, ever since the infamous Sykes-Picot Agreement of 16th May 1916, when the then governments of France and the British Empire decided how they were going to divide between them the Arab lands then within the Ottoman Empire into zones of influence, our respective countries have been guilty of culpable colonialism, and what is now the Syrian Arab Republic has ever since suffered from being one part of that division. To put it shortly, France and the British Empire were both responsible for the effects of their misrule on the lands which they split apart from one another for their own greedy purposes.
Despite this past, I have always been welcomed most warmly when I have arrived in Syria and treated with great kindness as a friend by all whom I have met there. I am therefore unable to accept the thesis put forward by your country's enemies that Syria has terrorist ambitions, and I feel it only right to congratulate you on not falling into the trap of relying on a limited number of groups or communities within your nation to work towards a successful future. As we all know, the policies pursued by successive, supposedly secular, French governments between the World Wars were based on the principle of divide and rule, which were taken to the extreme in the present day 'larger' Lebanon created after the occupation of the land by introducing a highly divisive constitution which succeeded in ensuring continuous quarreling between the many different ethnic and religious groups. We must now hope that you and Michel S'leiman can jointly overcome these problems bequeathed to you by former French governments in order to be able to work together for the benefit of the many diverse communities who should be able to live together peaceably in the Levant.
France, as the former colonial power, has a great responsibility to do what it can to overcome some of the difficulties which it had deliberately caused in the past, and furthermore, even if the Union for the Mediterranean finally comes to have little effect, you are right to stress that nothing can be done to improve relations in your part of the world without some help from the United States of America. You were too polite to say the obvious, namely that massively negative actions by successive administrations in the U.S.A. are among the root causes of the present tense situation, but your asking that the new administration due to take over there next January should act to assist in achieving peace may give those who are going to rule that country cause to re-consider its role as a military and political power. Without such aid, it is almost impossible to envisage any move towards genuine peace on the part of the enemy which occupies part of your nation's territory, since the U.S.A. provide the finance, the arms and the diplomatic support without which the enemy could not survive in its occupation of all the Holy Land, of part of your country and of a much smaller area of the Lebanon. In other words, Syria really needs a guarantee from all the great powers that any undertaking on the part of the Zionists will be followed by appropriate action, which can, we hope, include compliance with every single United Nations Resolution already passed but until now disdainfully flouted.
To sum up, Mr President, you are very welcome here, and we wish you a safe journey home after you leave to enable you to carry on the good work of improving the lot of all your citizens, including those dispossessed by the continued enemy occupation of an integral part of Syria.
Yours most sincerely,
Robert Thompson
Avocat Honoraire au Barreau de Boulogne-sur-Mer
22 rue de l'Eglise
62990 RIMBOVAL
FRANCE
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