10 billion euros.

That’s the amount of business deals finalised in Paris today between French President Nicolas Sarkozy and Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, on his first visit to France in 34 years.

Sarkozy apparently decided to play deaf to the complaints of his own top rights official who spoke out against the visit of Gaddafi, who ironically arrived in France on World Human Rights Day.

“Colonel Gaddafi must understand that our country is not a doormat on which a leader, terrorist or not, can come and wipe the blood of his crimes off his feet. France should not receive this kiss of death,” Secretary of State for Human Rights Rama Yade, a junior member of the centre-right government, told Le Parisien newspaper.

Those human rights crimes include the absence of a free press, the ban on independent organizations, the torture of detainees, the continued incarceration of political prisoners  and certainly no trickle-down to the people from Libya’s oil wealth. Where did those 10 billion euros come from?

Sarkozy – who with much fanfare appointed Yade and other ministers of immigrant descent to show what an inclusive leader he was – said he agreed with Yade and that he said as much to Gaddafi. The latter rubbished all that and told French television that Sarkozy said not a word about human rights, explaining that they were “quite close friends”.

Gaddafi is a has-been dictator who “gave up” his “programme of weapons of mass destruction” when he realised no one was scared of him anymore. Ever since, the U.S., the U.K. and now France have been tripping over themselves to reward him with business deals. No matter how many “doormats” are extended below his bloody feet, he remains tainted from head-to-toe in the blood and pain of the Libyan people.

Shame on those who tell him otherwise.