Il est encore bien t\u00f4t pour tirer quelque le\u00e7on que ce soit de la visite de Sarkozy \u00e0 Moscou, et surtout de sa rencontre avec Poutine. Le surtout qui peut para\u00eetre superflu marque surtout (!) l’aspect personnel de cette visite, un aspect certainement tr\u00e8s int\u00e9ressant. On n’en doutera pas une seconde \u00e0 la lecture de ce commentaire personnel de Charles Bremner, aujourd’hui<\/a> dans le Times<\/em>.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \tBremner conna\u00eet bien son affaire. Il est correspondant du quotidien londonien \u00e0 Paris et il a accompagn\u00e9 \u00e0 Moscou le pr\u00e9sident fran\u00e7ais. Ses impressions, ses observations d’humeur sont particuli\u00e8rement \u00e0 retenir, pour l’aspect personnel de la rencontre, laquelle a sans aucun doute un int\u00e9r\u00eat politique \u00e9vident. Sarko est-il sous le charme de Poutine? Et sous le charme de la cour des grands? Poutine est-il le symbole de la cour des grands pour Sarko?<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \tL’int\u00e9r\u00eat de ce commentaire personnel vaut qu’on le reprenne pour la plus grande part:<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \t\u00abWe know that Nicolas Sarkozy does not touch a drop of alcohol, so something else explained why his spirits were so high when he regaled us late last night on his dinner with Vladimir Putin.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n \t\u00bbSarko was unstoppable as he held forth in a little room in the National, the old Soviet hostelry, now transformed into luxury hotel, which is opposite the Kremlin and Red Square. In three hours at Putin’s dacha, two minds had met as they surveyed the world and Russia’s resurgence as a power, Sarko said. It was a long, very long discussion. Enthralling, very intimate. I felt a real desire to exchange ideas and to understand.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n \t\u00bbSomething seems to happen to Sarko when he meets Putin. It was after their first meeting, at the G8 sumit in Germany last June, that he acted like such an excited schoolboy that the video of Drunk Sarko became a Youtube hit. The French president arrived in Moscow talking of Putin’s brutality with Russian natural gas and warning how tough he would be with the uncooperative Kremlin.The cosy old Franco-Russian days were over and we would see what we would see, as the French say. Yet there he was overflowing with admiration for the soon-to-resign Tsar and claiming that he had won a big concession from him over policy on Iran’s nuclear programme. <\/em>[] <\/p>\n<\/p>\n \t\u00bbIt seemed once again that Sarko was incredulous that he was playing world statesman, accepted as one of the big-boys, dans la cour des grands. Putin, he said, had confided in him his possible plans for staying on in power by becoming prime minister once he stands down as President next year. He had sounded him out on his own ideas for putting a two-term limit on France’s five-year presidency. Putin is weighing the pros and cons of continuing power and he is extraordinarily lucid on the matter, said Sarkozy.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n \t\u00bbSarko also said that he had been frank about his misgivings on Russia’s treatment with internal dissent and its intolerance for homosexuals. Putin did not react badly, Sarko told me, because he had framed his remarks by stressing the world’s admiration for Russia’s revived power, saying that this could only be tarnished by less than impeccable conduct at home.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n \t\u00bbIt is always fascinating to see Sarkozy up close like this. He was even joking that he had something in common with Putin because he had been chief of the French secret service for four years as Interior Minister under Jacques Chirac. What makes you think I’m an ordinary president? he quipped to the group of reporters who had come from Paris to sit at his feet. Chirac would never have made a crack like that. Nor would he have chatted so openly after a session with his good friend Vladimir. Sarko is really different.<\/em>\u00bb<\/p>\n<\/p>\n