| Photo: Presidents Nicolas Sarkozy (L) of France and Felipe Calderon of Mexico, shake hands after signing agreements at the National Palace in Mexico City on March 9, 2009. |
The presidents of Mexico and France on Monday agreed to create a commission of legal experts to review the possibility of letting a Frenchwoman convicted of kidnapping in Mexico serve out her 60-year sentence in France.
The case of Florence Cassez has dominated attention during the official one-day visit by French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who came to Mexico to strengthen economic ties.
Sarkozy said Cassez told him she wants to return to France to finish her sentence for three kidnappings in 2005.
Sarkozy and President Felipe Calderon said each country would name legal experts to determine if the international law allowing such transfers would apply in her case.
Sarkozy said he is seeking to help Cassez because she is a French citizen who wants to return home, but he does not have an opinion about the court's verdict.
"I didn't come here to challenge the decision of Mexico's justice system," he told reporters. "I am not a judge."
Cassez's attorney, Agustin Acosta, said if she returns to France, she will have to accept her sentence and forgo any appeals. The commission is expected to give its report in three weeks and both countries are expected to accept its recommendations.
Cassez, 34, has acknowledged that she lived at the ranch where three of the kidnap victims were held, including an 8-year-old girl.
But she said she was simply dating a Mexican arrested in the case and did not know the people at the ranch had been kidnapped.
One of the victims, however, has identified Cassez as one of her captors.
French news media has been fascinated by the case. A front-page headline in the Paris daily newspaper Liberation referred to it as "The Florence Cassez Headache," noting that Sarkozy has been under pressure to win Cassez's release, at least to a prison in France.
The issue is sensitive in Mexico, which has one of the highest kidnapping rates in the world and where there is increasing public pressure to halt what is seen as widespread impunity for criminals.
Speaking at Mexico's National Palace on Monday, Sarkozy praised Calderon for Mexico's "courageous and determined battle" against drug cartels. Drug violence has claimed more than 7,200 lives since January 2008.
Sarkozy was accompanied by executives from Airbus parent EADS, energy giant GDF-Suez, major food maker Groupe Danone SA, drugmaker Sanofi-Aventis SA, top cement-maker Lafarge SA and others.
Calderon said French firms have promised to invest $800 million in aviation, pharmaceutical and other projects in Mexico.
Eurocopter, the helicopter subsidiary of Paris-based European Aeronautics Defense and Space Co., will invest $550 million in a helicopter-manufacturing plant in Mexico.
Paris-based drug maker Sanofi-Aventis SA will invest $126 million, and French aerospace company Safran will put up $150 million in investment and join in a binational project to produce biofuels from non-food crops such as salicornia, a salt-tolerant, herb-like plant that businessmen predicted could be grown in vast quantities along Mexico's extensive coasts.
Safran is developing engines to run on such biofuels.
Sarkozy also made a heavy pitch for adopting French technology, including nuclear power plants.
French businessmen, meanwhile, expressed interest in Mexican agricultural products such as fruit, vegetables and honey.
The two countries trade about $4 billion worth of goods annually.
By Mark Stevenson and Christine Ollivier (AP)
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