May 29, 2002	Wednesday	Rabi-ul-Awwal 16,1423

PARIS: France’s Interior Minister, Nicholas Sarkozy, has promised that one of his first priorities would be settling the longstanding problem of the representation of France’s Islamic population, estimated at more than five million.

Sarkozy has contacted the principal leaders of the French Islamic community and has told them that he would soon be meeting with them in an attempt to solve the complex problems of their representation in France.

As it stands, French Muslims do not enjoy the same rights vis-a-vis the French government as do French Catholics, Protestants and Jews, each of which have a unified representative organ that allows them to have direct access to the Interior Ministry.

This helps alleviate many of the problems that can arise for an organized religion, for example, the construction and financing of places of worship, as well as the holding of religious feasts.

Both happen to be major problems for the French Islamic community, which is why its leading members have attempted to come through with a unified proposal that would see one representational association speak in the name of all French Muslims.

But that has been hard to come by given the opposition by the Grande Mosque de Paris, and its rector Dalil Boubakeur — who are both close to Algeria as well as to President Jacques Chirac — and who refuse to become part of a larger group, as they fear losing their privileged role as the principal spokesman for French Muslims.

But Boubakeur stresses that the enlarged group would give more weight than ever to the extremist groups that have grown in importance in recent months.

Sarkozy is known to favour a compromise approach, and his aides say he doesn’t plan to give in to the persistent pressure that has been brought to bear upon him since the holding of the 19th annual assembly of the French Islamic community in Paris earlier this month.

A new vote is now scheduled for June 23 and Sarkozy’s gameplan, according to Interior Ministry sources, is to persuade both major group — Rector Boubakeur’s Grande Mosque de Paris and the more radical and politically weighted Union des Organizations Islamiques de France — to come through with a compromise solution, that would see the eventual Conseil Francais du culte Musulman (CFCM) not be dominated by either of them.

Already, Sarkozy has advised his contacts in the French Islamic community that he will meet them on an individual basis with the goal of making the CFCM a representative organization.

Sources close to Sarkozy note that if French Islam gets to have its day in the sun, it will largely be the work of one man: Kamel Kabtane, the rector of the Grande Mosque of Lyons, who has drafted a proposal — which is reportedly the blueprint which Sarkozy plans to work upon during his upcoming negotiations with French Muslim leaders.