Christian Malard .. French journalist keeps the memory of twentieth century

In the course of his career, the great French journalist Christian Malard is keeping the memory of the twentieth century. This writer and analyst, who is now one of the most prominent experts in the field of international relations, has met with the most prominent leaders of the world, over the past 50 years.

He started in the United States, where he met seven American presidents, from Nixon and Carter to Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Bush, the son, and Obama. At the same time, he was fond of the moving sand of Middle Eastern politics and was closely associated with the region’s most famous leaders. He was among the elite of the world’s journalists who were on board the French plane that took Ayatollah Khomeini from his Paris exile to Tehran after the Iranian revolution in 1979.

Later, Christian Malard closely lived with the dreams and disappointments of the Islamic revolution. He soon discovered and condemned the ugly face of the mullahs’ regime. He witnessed the assassination of the Iranian revolution by its people and its liquidation of all voices against the rule of the Faqih.

He then turned to the Arab region, where he met with the late Syrian leader Hafez al-Assad, King Hussein, his son King Abdullah, Sheikh Zayed, King Hassan II, Colonel Qaddafi and Tunisian President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali. But the two leaders closest to him; presidents Hosni Mubarak and Abdelaziz Bouteflika.

In 2007, Malard devoted a documentary film to President Mubarak in which he spoke of the unprecedented challenges of reform in Egypt and the vision of the Egyptian leadership and its position on the most important regional and international challenges. President Mubarak accepted all his questions, even the most sensitive and intimate, despite the reservations of most of his advisors, including his sons Gamal and Alaa.

The same ties of trust have been linked Malard to Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, where Christian Malard was allowed to visit the Algerian presidential palace whenever he wished to meet President Bouteflika without going through the usual protocol procedures.

Despite the circumstances of the Algerian president’s illness, which has prevented him from making press appearances since he was re-elected for a fourth term in 2014, he made a few days ago to send his “friend” Christian Malard a greeting card with his personal signature on the occasion of the end of the year.

His close ties with the Arab leaders did not prevent Christian Malard from meeting and interviewing Israeli leaders, both right-wingers such as Ariel Sharon and Benjamin Netanyahu, or leftists like Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres. All of them had a great sense of respect for the veteran French journalist, although he was always demonstrating his convictions of defending the two-state solution of Israel and Palestine, according to the internationally recognized borders, while recognizing East Jerusalem as the capital of Palestine.

Outside of the Arab region, Christian Malard was closely associated with Russian leaders, as the last Soviet leaders, Mikhail Gorbachev, then Boris Yeltsin, and Vladimir Putin, who broke the record number of interviews with Christian Malard.

He spoke to the Kremlin chief four times. Even a number of Western newspapers are criticizing Christian Malard, calling him “the spokesman for Putin.” But Malard does not care about those criticisms, saying Putin is “the only one who has the keys to Middle East crises, because he has maintained close ties with all the conflicting parties in the region.”

In spite of all the dialogues and press privileges he has had, over the course of his career spanning more than half a century, but Christian Malard says that there is a dream is still seen, despite the experience of the veteran, and the desire to dialogue with President Abdul Fattah al-Sisi. “The new Egyptian leader is the only one among the leaders of the region who has the courage to lead a popular revolution that toppled the Muslim Brotherhood.