Posted on 11/06/2004 6:35:52 PM PST by conservativecorner
PARIS (Reuters) - France has ordered more troops to Ivory Coast to protect French citizens after nine French soldiers and a U.S. aid worker were killed in a government bombing raid and Ivory Coast troops fired on French forces. French President Jacques Chirac ordered the Ivory Coast planes involved in the Saturday airstrike destroyed and a defense source said French forces would also destroy five Ivorian military helicopters, leaving the country with only one helicopter.
Mobs of machete-wielding pro-government supporters rampaged through Abidjan, furious at the French destruction of the planes. Plumes of smoke rose from the plush Cocody suburb.
The French embassy said a French school in Cocody had been set ablaze, four French policemen were evacuated from a building by helicopter before it too was burned down and that there was a loud explosion near the embassy.
The escalating tension between the East African country and its former colonial ruler followed three days of a government air offensive to retake the rebel-held north of the country.
French troops, in the Ivory Coast alongside U.N. soldiers as part of a 10,000-strong contingent to keep rebels and government forces from fighting, came under fire on Saturday, military officials said.
Two additional companies of troops were being sent to the Ivory Coast to protect French nationals there, Chirac's office said. The defense ministry source said the two companies comprised a total of 300 soldiers.
A French military spokesman in Abidjan said Paris was also sending three Mirage fighter planes and one supply aircraft to the West African country of Gabon as reinforcements.
Defense Minister Michele Alliot-Marie told a news conference late on Saturday France was holding Ivorian President Laurent Gbagbo "personally responsible" for maintaining public order in Abidjan.
Asked whether the bomb attack that killed the nine French soldiers, close to the rebel-held city of Bouake, was deliberate or committed in error, the French army's communications advisor Gerard Dubois told Reuters that that was a question only Ivorian officials could answer.
"For now, error or no error, that's up to the Ivorian government to say," he said.
"The President of the Republic has ordered the immediate destruction of the Ivorian military aircraft used in recent days in violation of the cease-fire," the office of French President Jacques Chirac said in a statement.
A defense ministry source told Reuters France was targeting five MI-24 helicopters, in addition to the Sukhois it has already eliminated. Destroying the seven aircraft would leave the Ivorian airforce with just one aircraft, the defense ministry source said.
This the wrong war, at the wrong place, at the wrong time! (New candidate for French Prime Minister Jacques Kerry)
There's only one thing the U.S. can hope for; that Michael Moore and MoveOn will come to the rescue.
france surrenders...film at 11
Didn't France get booted out of Ivory Coast about 2-3 years ago prior to the Iraqi war? France negotiated a godawful treaty between the govt of Ivory Coast and the rebel faction trying to take control of the nation. The rebel faction under this treaty would get control of the military. The president of the Ivory Coast was pressured to accept this treaty until the people of the nation rose up in protest and France pulled out with their tails between their legs. Or am I thinking of another country?
Have they started surrender negotiations yet, or will that be another day or two?
Animists - animus,i = mind,soul
Lets hope the Africans cut the French to pieces.
We need the US Department of State and the government to talk this at the United Nations and tell France not to go ISOLATIONISM without world approval.
Wait...Hold the phone! Dont let that transport take off without THE BOSS. They'll need a little kumbaya(sp?) spirit on the trip!
Quagmire! Quagmire!
Ivory Coast is France's Vietnam!
(of course, Vietnam was France's Vietnam, as well...)
I hope France gets the sh*t kicked out of it. Why was the American there? Peacekeeper? Hope the American wasn't pro-Islamic.
My question, too?
Sounds like a quagmire.
PARIS (Reuters) - France has ordered more white flags to the Ivory Coast to protect French citizens after nine French soldiers and a U.S. aid worker were killed in a government bombing raid and Ivory Coast troops fired on French forces. French President Jacques Chirac ordered the immediate surrender of all French assets and interests and has ordered that France's seat on the U.N. security council be forfeited as well. In exchange for Chirac's complete surrender of French interests, insurgents have freed a large quantity of wine and cheese captured in earlier raids.
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