Henri Ponsot

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Auguste Henri Ponsot

Auguste Henri Ponsot (born March 3, 1877 in Bologna , † March 1, 1963 ) was a French diplomat .

career

From 1903 to 1906 Ponsot was in the diplomatic service in Bangkok , from 1906 to 1912 he was envoy to the government of Siam and from 1912 to 1918 again as government ambassador to Bangkok.

1926-1933

From October 1926 to 1933 Ponsot was then High Commissioner in the League of Nations mandate for Syria and Lebanon . Even under his predecessor in the office of High Commissioner , Henry de Jouvenel (1925–1926), a commission of the Syrian-Palestinian Congress had announced the indispensable demand for the withdrawal of French troops during negotiations in Cairo . Ponsot ignored these demands entirely. He published his first proclamation in July 1927, after ten months of French silence with the words: "France will not return the mandate" . In the meantime, Ponsot had negotiated with the British Mandate troops in the Levant that they should deport the refugees of the Druze uprising from the French Mandate area as far as possible. A number of articles in Jâmi'aat al-'arabiyya dealt with the development of the Franco-British negotiations on the deportations of the exiles and their families from al-Azraq.

On 27 June 1927, the newspaper printed a telegram from Sultan al-Atrash to the office of Neusyrischen Party of Detroit , Michigan , which stated that the military had decided all the families of al-Azraq to clear and from East Jordan ( Transjordan each) . The insurgents returned briefly across the border to Syria, where they re-employed the French mandate troops . The situation in Hawran was confused, but the members of the exiled Syrian-Palestinian congress, above all Shukri al-Quwwatlî, negotiated with Ibn Saûd to give the rebels refuge in the newly created desert sultanate of Najd. Sultan al-Atrasch and his mainly Druze rebels went with their families to the desert oasis of Wâdî al Sirhân, about 150 km southeast of Amman, opposite the new border, next to the village of al-Haditha. They stayed there until 1937, they lived in tents and survived thanks to handouts distributed by the Syrian-Palestinian Congress, as well as donations from Syria and Lebanon and contributions from Arab migrants in North and South America.

When Charles Debba's first term in office ended in 1932, Bishara al Khuri and Emile Iddi ran for the presidency of Syria. This split the Chamber of Deputies. To end the deadlock, some MPs suggested Shaykh Muhammad al Jisr, the chairman of the Council of Ministers and Muslim leader of Tripoli, as a compromise candidate. However, Ponsot repealed the constitution on May 9, 1932 and extended Dabbas' term of office by one year. He prevented a Muslim from being elected President of Syria.

1933-1938

Ponsot was replaced on January 30, 1934 by Comt Damien de Martel. From September 14, 1933 to March 22, 1936, Ponsot was French General Resident for Morocco . From 1936 to 1938 Ponsot was ambassador to Ankara .

1939-1963

Mohammed Amin al-Husseini was housed in a villa in a suburb of Paris in May and June 1945 with two secretaries and a cook from the Paris mosque . In an interim report, Ponsot, who was working on the Quai d'Orsay at the time , wrote that he was impressed “by a certain flair of dignity and by the aristocratic demeanor” of the Mufti as well as by his developed French language skills. Regarding war crimes, the Mufti claimed that he had no knowledge of the existence of extermination camps and that he had never heard of "Karl Hichmann" (distorted rendering of the name Adolf Eichmann von Ponsot). Ponsot agrees with the mufti: Since the United Kingdom is not in a position to evade the influence of the Jewish world, France and the Arab states should come to an agreement on the future of Syria and Palestine. On June 26, 1945, through Ponsot, the Mufti offered, as part of a positive cooperation with France, to appease the general Arab unrest in Syria. In the context of opposition cooperation, the Mufti would work in favor of French politics in the event of crises in Palestine, Egypt, Iraq and Transjordan . Foreign Secretary Georges Bidault usually followed Ponsot's recommendations regarding the treatment of the mufti. Ponsot headed the arms company SOCiété d'Application et d'Exploitation des procédés Ponsot (Socapex Ponsot) .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Michael Provence The Great Syrian Revolt and the Rise of Arab Nationalism page 114
  2. ^ Library of Congress Country Studies The French Mandate
  3. ^ David Pryce-Jones , Juifs, Arabes, et diplomatie française, D. Pryce-Jones
  4. ↑ Tsilla Hershco , Le grand Mufti de Jérusalem en France, histoire d 'une évasion (1945-1946) in Controverses. Revue d'idées March 2006
personal data
SURNAME Ponsot, Henri
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Ponsot, Auguste Henri (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French diplomat
DATE OF BIRTH March 3, 1877
PLACE OF BIRTH Bologna
DATE OF DEATH March 1, 1963