Qatar's Latest Investment Stirs the French LONDON - A decision by the French government to allow Qatar to invest millions of euros in France's depressed and neglected suburbs has prompted concerns across the political spectrum about the motives of the wealthy Arab emirate. Qatar, a country smaller than Connecticut, with a native population of a quarter million, has used its gas and oil wealth in recent years to buy into European economies in sectors ranging from the prestige real estate market to professional soccer. In the latest initiative revealed on Monday, however, the Qataris are reaching out to the French "banlieues," the rings of poor and dilapidated suburbs with high immigrant populations that circle Paris and other major cities. French media reports said the plan was for Qatar to invest €50 million in promoting economic activity in poor neighborhoods where unemployment rates reach as high as 40 percent. The initiative has generated opposition from critics who object to an extension of Qatar's political influence in France, with some pointing to the emirate's links with fundamentalist Islamic movements in the Middle East. The outcry from the anti-immigrant far right was predictably loud. Marine Le Pen, head of the National Front, in a communique headlined "Islamic Trojan horse," said Qatar's decision was clearly linked to the fact that the majority of the population of the banlieues was Muslim. There was also unease on the left, however. Nicolas Demorand, editor-in-chief of the left-leaning Libération, suggested the Qatari investment was the latest exercise in "soft power" by an emirate that was far from philanthropic. "To see Qatar land in the French suburbs to take over from a cash-strapped Republic is something that deserves to be looked at again," he wrote. Qatari funding for the suburbs was first proposed in 2011 but was shelved by the government of President Nicolas Sarkozy ahead of presidential elections last spring. The government of François Hollande, his Socialist successor, has reportedly adapted the plan to include financing from the French government and the private sector, in order to make the project a joint venture with the Qataris. In a more traditional European investment, the Qatar Investment Authority this year took full control of Paris Saint-Germain, a top French soccer club. It also holds stakes in French hotels, office buildings and public companies. Elsewhere, Qatari money has financed the construction of Europe's tallest building, the newly-inaugurated Shard in London, as part of an expanding portfolio in Britain. It also put money into London's Olympic Park. The emirate's worldwide investments are predicted to reach more than $30 billion this year, according to Hussein al-Abdullah, an executive board member of the Qatar Investment Authority. The emirate's "soft power" has been enhanced for the past decade and a half by Al Jazeera, the independent television network based in Doha that is widely viewed throughout the Middle East and beyond. Al Jazeera has been criticized by Qatar's neighbors as acting as a mouthpiece for the emirate, as when Syria accused it this year of being part of a media war against the regime of President Bashar Al-Assad. Qatar has been at the forefront of supporting popular rebellions during the so-called Arab Spring, notably in Syria and Libya. That has included backing for Islamist groups, raising concerns in the West about its arming of potentially hostile fundamentalists. Writing in the British newspaper The Observer in July, Peter Beaumont noted that Qatar's "huge ambitions to spread influence around the globe were fueled by enormous wealth and devotion to a strict interpretation of the Koran." In France, Qatar's proposed investment has prompted a number of broadcast debates this week on the wisdom of allowing the emirate a role in French affairs. Ivan Rioufol of Le Figaro, who was due to appear in one such debate on Tuesday, wrote in a blog for the French daily: "France needs no lessons from the United States, nor the Council of Europe, and still less from Qatar, on how to run our suburbs or deal with political Islam. You can criticize the policy, but it's our problem.