These include a delivery of 160 Airbus passenger planes to the value of about 10bn euros.
And state-owned French energy firm Areva said it had signed a contract to build two nuclear reactors in China.

The announcements came as Mr Sarkozy held a second meeting with his Chinese counterpart Hu Jintao.

"The total amount of these contracts has never been matched before," he told the Chinese president as they met in Beijing's Great Hall of the People.

China growth
The reactors will be built in six years' time in the south of the country and will start generating power in 2014.

They will be operated by a new company set up by Areva and its Chinese partner, China Guangdong Nuclear Power Corp, until 2026.

The BBC's James Reynolds in Beijing says China is increasingly looking to nuclear energy to meet its growing demand for power and France is keen to make sure that it is involved in this process.
In addition, China is also expected to become the world's second biggest aircraft market after the US with strong growth in its domestic routes over the next few years.

The Airbus deal to supply 110 of the firm's single aisle A320 jet and 50 of the slightly bigger A330 plane will be welcome news to the European planemaker, which has struggled in the face of delays to new models and the weakening dollar.

Human rights
Following the signing of these deals, President Sarkozy will carry on with his official visit, his first to Asia since his election in May.

Mr Sarkozy is set to hold further talks in Beijing and will then travel to Shanghai to meet Chinese business leaders.

According to some critics, the French President should be doing more during the trip to pressure China over its human rights record and use of the death penalty.
The BBC's world affairs correspondent Jill McGivering said that "although Mr Sarkozy is travelling with seven ministers, for example, the French human rights minister is not one of them".

And she added that there has been little evidence that Mr Sarkozy had raised other difficult issues such as Tibet and China's relationship with Iran.

Some observers are calling on China to take a harder line with Iran over its nuclear programme. Mr Sarkozy has warned that it would be unacceptable if Tehran acquired nuclear weapons.
However, the President's office countered that despite the commercial focus of the trip, Mr Sarkozy had used a state dinner to urge China to employ the death penalty less frequently.

IRAN

Iran begins Strait of Hormuz war games... By Nasser Karimi - The Associated Press.  Marine Corps News, April 22 

The country’s leader expressed new concerns that the U.S. has made a veiled nuclear threat against the Islamic Republic.

Tehran was angered by President Obama’s announcement earlier this month of a new U.S. nuclear policy in which he pledged America would not use atomic weapons against nations that do not have them. Iran and North Korea were pointedly excluded from the non-use pledge, and Iranian leaders took that as an implicit threat.

Iran has been holding military maneuvers, dubbed as The Great Prophet, in the strategic waters annually since 2006 to show off its military capabilities.

The war games have routinely heightened tension in the region, but they have recently taken on added significance as the standoff between the West and Tehran over Iran’s nuclear program grows deeper. The West suspects the program conceals a nuclear arms production drive, a charge that Iran denies.

Iran FM meets UN nuclear chief amid reports of secret deal with Zimbabwe... Haaretz, April 25

Iran's foreign minister met the head of the United Nations' nuclear agency on Sunday to discuss a nuclear fuel swap proposal that could help ease Tehran's dispute with the West, Iranian officials and media said.

Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki told Iranian state television before his meeting with Yukiya Amano of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) that their talks would be "decisive and detailed".

Iranian officials in the Vienna delegation confirmed to Reuters the two men had met but they gave no more information.

"The IAEA...can play a more constructive role," Mottaki said in his earlier comments. "We believe the fuel swap can create multilateral trust."
The meeting came just hours after The Sunday Telegraph reported that Iran had signed a secret deal with Zimbabwe to mine its untapped uranium reserves.

The agreement was secured last month, when a close aide to Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe visited Tehran.

According to the deal, Iran will supply Zimbabwe oil in exchange for access to potentially huge deposits of uranium ore - which can be converted into basic fuel for nuclear power, or could also be enriched to make nuclear arms.

A Zimbabwean government source has told The Daily Telegraph that "Iran secured the exclusive uranium rights last month when minister of state for Presidential affairs, Didymus Mutasa, visited Tehran. This is when the formal signing of the deal was made, away from the glare of the media."

The Daily Telegraph also reported that Iran's stockpiles of uranium, which mostly came from South Africa during the 1970s, has been running low, therefore the apparent deal with Zimbabwe has come at a critical time.

The Zimbabwean government source added that "the uranium deal is the culmination of a lot of work dating back to 2007, when Mr Mugabe visited Tehran in search of fuel. Now Iran is beginning to reap the benefits.

"Iranian geologists have being conducting feasibility studies of the mineral for over a year now and we expect them to go ahead with mining once they are ready."

Iran's nuclear ambitions continue to draw concerns from the United States and European allies who fear Iran is seeking the capability to build nuclear weapons. Iran has rebuffed diplomatic overtures to resolve the issue and is in defiance of UN Security Council demands that it suspend uranium enrichment. 

OBAMA  AND  ISRAEL

On Israel, Obama Playing the Mideast Game Wrong ... Mortimer B. Zuckerman, U.S. News, April 26

The Middle East peace process is stalled thanks to a second deadlock engineered by the U.S. government. President Obama began the process with his call for a settlement freeze in 2009 and escalates it now with a major change of American policy on Jerusalem.

The president seeks to prohibit Israel from any construction in its capital - in an exclusively Jewish suburb of East Jerusalem. This, despite the fact that all former administrations had unequivocally understood that the area in question would remain part of Israel in any final peace agreement.

Objecting to housing in East Jerusalem is tantamount to getting the Israelis to agree to the division of Jerusalem - even before the start of final status talks with the Palestinians. In 1995, a substantial bipartisan majority in Congress adopted the Jerusalem Embassy Act calling for the movement of the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem - and equally importantly, stating that Jerusalem must remain united under Israeli sovereignty.

Israel's claim for sovereignty over the whole, undivided city of Jerusalem predates the arrival of any Arabs to the region, and stems from biblical times. Jews in prayer turn toward Jerusalem. The Arks, the sacred chests that hold the Torah scrolls in synagogues throughout the world, face Jerusalem.

Each year on Passover Jews say, "Next year in Jerusalem." When Muslims pray, they face Mecca, not Jerusalem. The Old Testament mentions Jerusalem, or its alternative name Zion, a total of 457 times. The Koran does not mention Jerusalem once.

The Israelis have no intention of ever again being prevented from living throughout the city as they were between 1948 and 1967 when, under Jordanian control, Jewish communities were ruthlessly and violently driven out of areas where they had lived for centuries. To Israelis, there is no Jewish Western Jerusalem and Eastern Arab Jerusalem but simply a mosaic of people who are mixed and cannot be separated or divided.

The new Obama administration policy is seen as an effort to force Israel to accept the division of Jerusalem, even before peace talks start. Dividing Jerusalem would put Palestinian forces and rockets a few miles from Israel's Knesset. Also, the Jewish neighborhoods bordering Arab neighborhoods would be within range of light weapon and machine-gun fire.

This is exactly what happened after the Oslo Accords, when Palestinians fired from Beit Jalla toward Jerusalem's Gilo neighborhood, wounding scores of residents.

Fast missile to hit anywhere in an hour... Sunday Times.  April 25, 2010

HAUNTED by the memory of a lost opportunity to kill Osama Bin Laden before he attacked the World Trade Center in New York, US military planners have won President Barack Obama’s support for a new generation of high-speed weapons that are intended to strike anywhere on Earth within an hour.

Gates, Barak: Syria providing Hezbollah with missiles
Defense minister visits Pentagon, meets with his American counterpart who says Shiite organization now 'has more missiles and rockets than most governments in the world'. Barak: Syria supporting Hezbollah with weapon systems which could change delicate balance 

HUMAN RIGHTS

UN won’t remove Israeli organ stealing libel from website... UN Watch, April 28

Letter to UN High Commissioner of Human Rights Navi Pillay
April 28, 2010 

Dear High Commissioner Pillay,

We wrote you on March 24, 2010, requesting that the UN Human Rights Council website cease hosting an anti-Semitic text (A/HRC/13/NGO/23) that, in a modern adaptation of the medieval blood libel, falsely accuses Israeli doctors of a racist conspiracy to steal Palestinian organs.

...hateful statements  demonize Israelis as Nazi-like perpetrators of “ethnic cleansing” and “pogroms against Palestinians,” and accuse “Israeli physicians, medical centers, rabbis and the Israeli Army” of a conspiracy to steal organs of “dead, kidnapped and killed Palestinians,” are approved, and, by necessary implication, deemed to be entirely in accordance with “accepted United Nations standards.”

….In September 2008, your office reviewed, approved and circulated an EAFORD written statement (A/HRC/9/NGO/1) calling Israel an “illegal state” — an even harsher term than “regime.” Far worse, however, this text, in the guise of a rhetorical question, went on to

accuse “Jews everywhere” of having “forgotten the terrors of the Holocaust to such an extent as to allow Israel to pursue and inflict one on the Palestinian people.”…

Secretary-General Annan pledged that “the human rights machinery of the United Nations has been mobilized in the battle against anti-Semitism.”…..

Madame High Commissioner, where is this vigilance?

Secretary-General Annan concluded his call to action by proclaiming that “Jews everywhere must feel that the United Nations is their home, too.”

Yet Madame High Commissioner, how can this be possible so long as your website continues to host a statement that, to a worldwide audience, declares “Jews everywhere” to be evil?
In conclusion, therefore, we urge you to overturn the rejection of our request, and to immediately remove these anti-Semitic texts from your website.