By Owen Carpenter-Zehe

 

BRUSSELS, 22 Feb. - (ANA) - A group of 151 former ministers, ambassadors, and diplomats accused the French foreign minister, Jean-Noël Barrot, of spreading disinformation on Wednesday (18 February), and called for a correction to comments he made about the United Nations rapporteur for Palestine, Francesca Albanese.

 

Their open letter concerns Barrot’s citing of a manipulated version of remarks by Albanese, which were made at the Al Jazeera Media Forum on 7 February. 

 

She is accused of calling Israel the “common enemy of humanity” during her talk at the forum.

 

Defending herself two days later, Albanese posted her whole speech on social media — where she does not call Israel the enemy — and clarified: “The common enemy of humanity is THE SYSTEM that has enabled the genocide in Palestine.”

 

However, an edited version had already begun to circulate online.  

 

Barrot used the supposed comments to call for her resignation before French lawmakers on 11 February. Other EU ministers have also made such a demand.

 

With the foreign minister posting on his social media Thursday saying: “Stop fake news. I did not truncate or distort Ms. Albanese’s comments. I simply condemned them because they are reprehensible.”

 

The Coalition of Former Diplomats and Civil Servants for Accountability, the authors of the open letter, accuse Barrot of spreading inaccurate and manipulated information by publicly citing it, and condemn its use to discredit the UN official. 

 

“The dissemination of disinformation by senior officials undermines international law, weakens human rights protections, and threatens the credibility of the multilateral system itself,” wrote the coalition in the press release.

 

 

 

 

The group calls upon the French foreign ministry to retract and correct the inaccurate statement, reaffirm its commitment to independent UN officials, and uphold its obligation to strengthen international institutions. 

 

The groups claims are strengthened by a UN committee of six independent experts tasked with reviewing the complaints against her, who condemned the accusations on Tuesday as “vicious attacks, rooted in disinformation.”

 

Writing to EUobserver, Claudio Francavilla, associate director of EU advocacy at Human Rights Watch said: “It’s appalling that Barrot and other EU foreign ministers reacted more strongly to a visibly doctored video of Albanese than to the real Israeli crimes she and so many others have documented.”

 

“They either didn’t notice the video was manipulated, or they did and yet decided to attack on the basis of it, underestimating the backlash that would follow. I don’t know which option exposes higher degrees of incompetence,” he added. 

 

Meanwhile, the European Commission is currently sending Mediterranean commissioner Dubravka Šuica to participate in US president Donald Trump’s Board of Peace, a controversial body developed to facilitate the next phase of the Gaza peace plan. 

 

Šuica is also scheduled to meet with Nikolay Mladenov, high representative for Gaza, and with H.E. Badr Abdelatty, minister of foreign affairs of Egypt.

 

The Board of Peace talks are taking place on Thursday.    - (ANA) -

 

AB/ANA/22 February 2026 - - -