PARIS, Jan 22: The French foreign ministry on Tuesday defended Paris’s decision to abstain from voting to elect a Libyan representative as chief of the UN human rights body.

If France chose to abstain in the vote, which saw Libyan ambassador to Geneva Najat al-Hajjaji elected head of the UN commission on human rights, it was done in such a way that France could send two different messages to Libya, a French spokesman said.

He noted that if the vote had been taken a year or two ago, France would undoubtedly have joined the United States and Canada in voting against Libya _ to protest Libya’s alleged involvement in the bombing of a French aircraft over Niger in 1989.

However, Paris also wanted to respect the memory of a large number of Africans who died in the plane crash and so thought it best to neither support nor oppose Tripoli’s elevation at the world body, the spokesman said.