The two top leaders of Quebec’s independence movement slammed French President Nicolas Sarkozy on Thursday for indirectly criticizing their cause earlier this week.
At a ceremony in Paris to honor Quebec Premier Jean Charest, Sarkozy expressed his distaste for sectarian governments, without actually naming Quebec separatists.
“Do you really believe that the world, with the unprecedented crisis that it is going through, needs division, needs hatred?” the French president asked.
“Those who do not understand that, I don’t think they have understood the message of the Francophonie, the universal values we hold in Quebec as in France — the rejection of bigotry, the rejection of division, the rejection of self-confinement, the refusal to define one’s identity through fierce opposition to another,” Sarkozy said.
During a news conference on Thursday, the leader of the federal Bloc Quebecois party Gilles Duceppe responded to Sarkozy’s comments, saying they were unacceptable.
“We cannot accept that a leader — regardless of who he is — makes such a statement about millions of Quebecers,” said Duceppe, whose party favors Quebec’s separation from Canada.
The four-page letter, sent on Wednesday via Canada’s ambassador to France, is signed by both Duceppe and provincial Parti Quebecois leader Pauline Marois. It marks the first time in the 40-year history of Quebec’s sovereignty movement that the separatist parties have sent a letter of complaint to a foreign leader.
Duceppe and Marois are not asking for an apology, but said they want to inform Sarkozy that Quebec sovereignty is not about disdain for Canada.
“Never has a head of state shown such a lack of respect towards the more than 2 million Quebecers who consider themselves sovereigntists,” the leaders wrote.
They said Sarkozy was wrong to suggest the independence movement in the French-speaking province is not inclusive and open.
“We are not sectarian, we are not closed in on ourselves, we do not detest Canada,” Marois said. “We want to live in better harmony, and sovereignty would allow us to establish links and a better relationship with the rest of Canada.”
There was no official response from France yesterday.
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
Armed with 4,000 eggs and a truckload of sugar and cream, French pastry chefs on Wednesday completed a 121.8m-long strawberry cake that they have claimed is the world’s longest ever made. Youssef El Gatou brought together 20 chefs to make the 1.2 tonne masterpiece that took a week to complete and was set out on tables in an ice rink in the Paris suburb town of Argenteuil for residents to inspect. The effort overtook a 100.48m-long strawberry cake made in the Italian town of San Mauro Torinese in 2019. El Gatou’s cake also used 350kg of strawberries, 150kg of sugar and 415kg of
RSS