--- Jean-Marc Chaton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Not that I'm particulary keen on defend this > government, but I'd be > thankful if you could elaborate and educate me on > this sentence. As always we > are the last informed on errors of our own > governments. > > Thanks > > > -- > Jean-Marc
Hi Jean-Marc. What the French government is doing in Darfur hasn't broken to the mainstream press too much yet, but the BBC talks about it a little bit: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/3875277.stm And note this is from the _BBC_. Quoting: "As was the case in Iraq, France also has significant oil interests in Sudan. Mr Muselier also dismissed claims of "ethnic cleansing" or genocide in Darfur. "I firmly believe it is a civil war and as they are little villages of 30, 40, 50, there is nothing easier than for a few armed horsemen to burn things down, to kill the men and drive out the women," he said. Human rights activists say the Janjaweed are conducting a genocide against Darfur's black African population." In terms of Rwanda, I think it's been a little more explored. This is a more general indictment of French foreign policy: http://www.newstatesman.com/site.php3?newTemplate=NSArticle_NS&newDisplayURN=200406280013 Quoting the section on Rwanda: Linda Melvern, author of two studies on the Rwandan genocide, believes that French policy then, as now, is "almost beyond belief. The more one looks into their actions, the worse it gets. The French Senate inquiry into Rwanda was a whitewash . . ." Her third book about Rwanda will concentrate on the role of France. She has a leaked memo confirming that the French supplied members of the interim government responsible for the massacres with satellite phones to direct operations across the country. "They hand-delivered them by courier," she says. "In the run-up to the massacres, the French had 47 senior officers living with and training the genocidaires. French policy is about influence and money and Francophonie," says Melvern. "They are very professional at manipulating the UN system. By controlling Boutros Boutros-Ghali, their candidate for UN secretary general, they determined what information about the Rwandan genocide reached the outside world." There are some other things too. I was told quietly by people involved at very senior levels in the American military effort in Kosovo and Bosnia that they believed the French miitary was leaking information to the Serbs. This was confirmed to me by my old mentor, Stanley Hoffmann, who is (amongst other things), _French_, and very, very, very pro-French in all things, and who was quite enraged (to the extent that Stanley, possibly the world's most mild-mannered person, ever gets enraged) by the whole affair. This isn't classified - I think I've actually seen public references to it, but I can't think of one offhand. It's just something that the mainstream media has, for whatveer reason (I think I know, but what the hell) hasn't talked about yet. This was because the French government had very close ties to the Serbs and, in the crudest of possible terms, why let a little genocide interefere with that kind of relationship? The end result of all of this sort of behavior, Jean-Marc, is I've been told by people in the Pentagon - and not Rumsfeld appointees, but career staff - that they think of France as an American enemy, and it has acted that way for years - long before Iraq, basically ever since the fall of the Soviet Union. From my outside perspective, that seems right to me. ===== Gautam Mukunda [EMAIL PROTECTED] "Freedom is not free" http://www.mukunda.blogspot.com __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail - 50x more storage than other providers! http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
