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France to renegotiate military treaties with African countries

February 28, 2008 (CAPE TOWN) — France will renegotiate all its defence cooperation agreements with African countries, President Nicolas Sarkozy said on Thursday in a move that could alter France’s military support for some of its closest allies.

President Nicolas Sarkozy
President Nicolas Sarkozy
In accordance with defense or military cooperation treaties with some former colonies, France has thousands of troops at four military bases in Africa, the largest at Djibouti in the Horn of Africa. The other bases are in Senegal, Gabon and Ivory Coast in West Africa. France also has troops in Chad and Central African Republic.

“I am not saying that the existing agreements should necessarily be scrapped and that everything should be erased with the stroke of a pen,” he told South Africa’s parliament on a state visit to the continental power. “They must reflect Africa as it is today and not as it was yesterday,” Sarkozy said.

He said the new policy marked a “major turning point” for the former colonial master. “It is unthinkable that the French Army should be drawn into domestic conflicts,” Sarkozy added.

When rebels besieged Chad’s capital earlier this month, French forces helped evacuate foreigners and gave logistical support to the government, including transporting munitions from Libya and protecting the airport.

Critics say French intervention helped support an authoritarian regime. But Sarkozy emphasized that he did not authorize French troops to get involved in the fighting or shoot any Africans and said that his approach was “unprecedented” and indicative of future policy.

Sarkozy said that in the future France also wanted to pay greater attention to human rights and democracy, describing delays in free and fair elections in Ivory Coast and Chad as “unacceptable.” The same applied to Zimbabwe, he said.

France’s relationship with leaders in its former colonies has benefited both sides, with France receiving support at the United Nations from African regimes and access to the continent’s natural resources. African leaders in turn have reaped aid, and some might not have survived without French military backing.

Sarkozy, who was elected in May, has insisted that he wants a “healthier relationship” with Africa.

“Africa must take on its own security issues and problems,” he said. Policing was a role for the African Union and regional African organizations, and France would help those organizations play a more active decisive role in peacekeeping, the French leader said.

After colonial rule ended in the 1960s, France regularly intervened to prop up rulers of its choice in French-speaking Africa, sometimes drawing accusations of helping dictators to protect entrenched business and political interests.

(ST)

Information for this report provided by AP and Reuters

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