Pledges of economic and financial reforms made at separate international donor conferences during the 2000s have mostly gone unfulfilled, including those made during the ParisIII Donor Conference in 2007 following the July 2006 war.
He also knew the French Impressionists' paintings of expansive avenues, exquisite vistas and elegant bourgeois society that marked the stunning transformation of Napoleon III's Paris into a gleaming, modern metropolis.