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.
These rebel forces need (but probably don't "deserve") our support.
Do the Frogs have a UN Security Council mandate to do this??
Quagmire?
Do they have the UN's approval? Where are the weapons of mass destruction? etc.....
Maybe if they get the screws working on their Charles DeGaulle they could send it down there. Ready the tugs for action!!
What is fascinating about this is that the French went in here UNILATERALLY without UN approval at the precise time that we were seeking entry into Iraq. While France snubbed UN approval for a military mission without allies, they assaulted our request on iraq. Now we see the UN cooperating with the mission anyway.
Did Chirac pass the Global Test to act?
Things are still pretty quiet next door in Liberia aren't they?
Can we send arms to Ivory Coast to help them? I know France will be defeated anyway, but I would like to think we had a hand in it.
Don't we need to get paid under the table before we bring it to the Security Council? We get more money just like the frogs if we go this route.
Give the inspectors more time....
Did they ask UN???
hehehehehh, good one!
I know. Let's promise to support them, and then torpedo them in the security council at the last second.
They have to get more boots on the ground before they can have a really big mass surrender.
and where are the mass graves?
IIRC, isn't this war basically a war between Muslims and the animalists, with France backing the Muslims?
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