French foreign minister on defensive over Tibet

By Crispian Balmer

PARIS (Reuters) - French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner, whose reputation as a human rights champion has been dented by his moderate stance towards China over Tibet, denied on Wednesday that he had sold out his ideals.

Kouchner, once a rights activist of world renown, said in newspaper interviews that his high profile political role meant he had to be more measured than was previously the case.

"Human rights cannot in themselves constitute a policy. Not at least when one is in charge of the ministry of foreign affairs," Kouchner told Liberation daily.

Hugely popular in France, Kouchner was co-founder of medical agency Medecins Sans Frontieres and has been at the forefront of numerous international rights' campaigns over the decades.

Many of his Socialist colleagues reacted with dismay when he agreed to join President Nicolas Sarkozy's centre-right cabinet last year and say his muted response to the protests in China's ethnic Tibetan regions have revealed his political impotence.

"What's the point of Kouchner?" left-leaning Liberation newspaper said in its front-page headline on Wednesday.

"One expects more of the ex-French Doctor, who always stood out because of his physical courage and his sense of symbolic gestures in favor of freedom around the world," it said.

Kouchner was one of the first politicians to raise the possibility last week of a boycott of the opening ceremony of the Olympic games in Beijing in August to protest against China's handling of the Tibet unrest.

But he swiftly went back on the idea, saying economic ties with China meant France could not rock the boat.

His comments infuriated his friends on the left, some of whom suggested Sarkozy was cramping his style.

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"Bernard, stop sitting on the fence. For an issue like this which is so important and for which you have struggled for all your life, you have to speak out with strength and with clarity," Socialist veteran Jack Lang said at the weekend.

Ironically, Sarkozy has since suggested that France could yet boycott the Beijing opening ceremony and Kouchner seconded this on Wednesday, albeit insisting that economic realities could not be ignored.

"We are constrained by a certain number of economic interests in order not to boost unemployment. That doesn't mean one doesn't say anything," he said, adding that Sarkozy himself had never tried to muzzle him.

"He doesn't use me. Nobody has ever told me to shut up."