France could launch a military action against Libya within hours after the UN had authorized operation said French government spokesman Francois Baroin today, Friday. “The attack will come quickly,” he told radio station RTL.
Meanwhile Reuters reports that Gaddafi’s forces are bombing Misrata.
Norway will participate in any international military action against Muammar Kadaffi in Libya, said Defense Minister Grete Faremo to VG online. “We will contribute to the operation. But it is too early to say exactly in what way”. One possibility is that Norway will send F-16 fighters. “But we will also be launching a major humanitarian operation with transport aircraft”.
China said on Friday that it was concerned about the UN resolution to impose a flight ban over Libya, although the country chose not to use its veto to block it. “We oppose the use of military force in international relationships, and have serious reservations about elements of the resolution, “said Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu.
Ten countries late on Thursday voted for the resolution while Russia, China, Germany, Brazil and India abstained. The resolution calls for “all necessary measures” to protect civilians against Gadaffi, but no foreign soldiers will be sent to Libya.
Opinion is divided on how soon the United States military mobilization can begin. French diplomats said that along with Britain they could have a military response force ready on Friday, writes Reuters. But representatives of the military in Washington are hesitant. The senior general in the United States, Norton Schwartz, said on Thursday that it may take up to one week until the operation is in progress.
Archive for the ‘France’ Category
Gaddafi bombs Misrata while France tries to hurry into military action
March 18, 2011Sarkozy is using the Sendai quake and Fukushima troubles to play politics
March 16, 2011Sometimes Sarkozy’s opportunism for gaining economic advantage is almost as vulgar as bunga bunga Berlusconi’s sex parties. But it is also – I think – a very clever move. Sarkozy is attempting to take a pre-emptive lead by being in the forefront of denigrating the Japanese nuclear program so that he can – by contrast – promote French nuclear technology and the French nuclear plant manufacturer Areva and thus preserve the French dependence on nuclear power.
I predict his line will be that the Japanese nuclear plants were old fashioned and that French nuclear technology is different and inherently safe. He will walk the fine line between supporting “the Japanese people in their hour of need” while criticising TEPCO, its handling of the Fukushima problems and the outdated technology (the 6 reactors at Fukushima Dai-ichi were built starting in 1963 and came into operation between 1970 and 1979).
No other country relies as heavily as France on nuclear power. It relies on nuclear power for 75% of it domestic supplies. It has 19 plants and 58 reactors. France is also at the forefront of nuclear technology, and President Sarkozy knows the debate over nuclear energy following events in Japan will affect the fortunes of the giant nucelar group Areva.
Like other countries, France is to check its nuclear reactors following the problems in Japan. But President Nicolas Sarkozy’s faith in the country’s nuclear programme seems unshaken. “France has made the choice of nuclear energy, which is an essential element of its energy independence and the fight against greenhouse gases,” he told his cabinet today. “This choice has been unseparable from an unfaltering undertaking to ensure a very high level of safety at our nuclear installations. I remain today convinced of the pertinence of these choices.”
French President Nicolas Sarkozy says he will call a special G20 meeting to discuss the energy sector in light of events in Japan. France currently holds the G20 presidency. France has also called a meeting of G7 finance ministers to respond to the crisis in Japan, Reuters reports. Finance Minister Christine Lagarde says the meeting will look at “how we can take part in their debt issues and how we can react on a financial level”.
From Paris, the BBC’s Christian Fraser says that France’s decision to offer it Tokyo-based citizens the chance to leave is partially motivated by domestic political problems. “Obviously it is a precaution and they might be accused of scaremongering but their new Foreign Minister Alain Juppe has been keen to get on the front foot, to show that they are in charge of the situation,” he said.
Related: Does France have special information about Fukushima?
Does France have special information about Fukushima?
March 15, 2011o600 CET : Wednesday 16th: France is now urging its nationals in Tokyo to leave Japan or head to the south of the country, Reuters reports. It says Paris has asked the Air France carrier to provide planes for the evacuation. The BBC’s Chris Hogg in Tokyo says the evacuation will begin on Thursday. Two French planes are already on their way to Japan.
It could be that France has access to some special information that the problems at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plants are much worse than anything being reported in Japan or by the IAEA, but the almost orchestrated negativity from French Agencies is noteworthy.
Politicians and agencies are positive about support for Japan regarding the earthquake and the tsunami, but the negativity is focused around the Fukushima nuclear plant and is particularly noticeable from Agence France Presse, the French Nuclear Agency and French Radio.
I tend to be extremely suspicious of French nuclear politics and cannot help feeling that there is an agenda here which involves being as negative as possible about the Japanese nuclear industry to later show up how the French nuclear industry is so much better.
- France’s nuclear safety authority says it classifies the Fukushima plant accident as level six. The maximum is level seven, used only once for the 1986 Chernobyl accident, Reuters reports. The Japanese Nuclear Agency has classified the event as Level 4.
- Europe’s Energy Commissioner says Japan’s nuclear disaster is an “apocalypse”, adding that Tokyo has almost lost control of events at the Fukushima power plant, AFP report.
- AFP reports that several countries are screening passengers on flights arriving from Japan.
- Radio France to withdraw staff in Japan after nuclear accidents: Dow Jones
But at the same time France’s Foreign Minister Alain Juppe has said: “We expressed our admiration for the dignity and the courage shown by the Japanese during this unprecedented ordeal. We expressed our confidence in the way the Japanese authorities have faced the aftermath of the disaster with such efficiency, which the whole world has recognised.”
France takes the lead and recognises Libyan rebels while Gaddafi’s envoys head for Brussels
March 10, 2011The new French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe is now moving fast to try and rectify a string of blunders and to try and restore some cohesion to French foreign policy. After the lightweight flitting about of Michelle Alliot-Marie and her Tunisian holidays, the weight of the former French Prime Minister is beginning to be felt. Though the news was reported by Sarkozy’s office I suspect that Alain Juppé has multiple objectives with this move. And one of them is to show that French Foreign policy can be taken seriously. His biggest task will be to tame Sarkozy’s arrogance and impetuousness.
Alain Juppé: Image via Wikipedia
France has become the first country to recognise the Libyan rebel leadership, the National Libyan Council (NLC), as the country’s legitimate government. The office of French President Nicolas Sarkozy said Paris regarded the NLC as Libya’s “legitimate representative”. …
….
Mustafa Gheriani, a spokesman for the rebels in their eastern stronghold of Benghazi, said the French move was “breaking the ice”, adding that he expected other EU members to follow suit.
However Italy and Spain have said they will not take a similar step until European Union members have reached a common position on the issue.
EU foreign ministers will also hold talks in Brussels, ahead of a European Council summit on Friday.
But France 24 reports that Gaddafi’s envoys are also on their way to Brussels for some lobbying activity:
…. The EU’s 27 foreign ministers started the ball rolling mid-morning, preparing a full summit of leaders the next day.
Britain and France are lobbying for United Nations Security Council support for a no-fly zone. Anxious Washington wants any military action conducted under the banner of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, with Arab regional backing seen as essential.
“Some think this could protect civilians from aerial bombardment, others fear risks in terms of how it would play with Arab public opinion,” said a top EU official who asked not to be named.
On the headline initiative of enforcing a no-fly zone over a country vaster than restricted air exclusion areas over Iraq or the Balkans in past conflicts, “countries are divided” over operational input and scope, added the source.
The meetings follow a flurry of diplomatic activity that Thursday saw France extend official recognition to the rebel Libyan national council whose representative had earlier lobbied the European parliament. France and Germany urged European partners to engage in dialogue with the rebels.
On Wednesday Kadhafi sent his own envoys to Europe and they were reportedly heading for Brussels. Asked to confirm, an EU official said “we don’t know for certain”.
New French Foreign Minister moves quickly to rectify Sarkozy’s blunders
February 28, 2011
Alliot-Marie: Image via Wikipedia
Sarkozy has always given me the impression of being rather condescending with former colonies and of running a foreign policy based almost entirely on short-term economic benefit. The French Government – as most others – has been caught completely unprepared by the upheavals in North Africa and the Middle East. But Sarkozy and his ministers have been particularly inept with Tunisia and Egypt and to some extent with Morocco and Libya.
Foreign Minister Michelle Alliot-Marie was stupid enough not only to accept air travel and holidays from Ben Ali’s friends but also to actually offer French support for the Tunisian security services when the demonstrations first began. Alliot-Marie’s partner, Patrick Ollier is also accused of using his close relationship with Muammar Gaddafi to secure French arms deals with Libya. He remains in the cabinet in charge of parliamentary affairs but she has now been sacked by Sarkozy. The Prime Minister, Francois Fillon who also accepted free holidays paid for by Mubarak remains in place.
Sarkozy also found another scapegoat in Pierre Menat the Ambassador in Tunis and sacked him as well. His replacement – the brash and arrogant Boris Boillon – then went and endeared himself to the Tunisians by immediately throwing a tantrum and calling the Tunisian press “stupid” at a press briefing on his arrival. Naturally the video found its way to You Tube ( 2:40 into the video). The Tunisians demanded his removal and he was forced to apologise.
“I say I am sorry, I regret my words, I was stupid,” Ambassador Boris Boillon said over state television. “I ask for the forgiveness of all Tunisians.” Tunisians are deeply suspicious of former colonial ruler France’s role in supporting Ben Ali, who ran the North African country repressively for more than 20 years.
Sarkozy is known for not caring much for diplomats while diplomats consider him impulsive and an amateur:
Mr Sarkozy has been criticised for several years over the way his government has run foreign policy. Critics accuse him of riding roughshod over foreign service chiefs at the Quai d’Orsay while keeping key decisions in the hands of his Chief of Staff Claude Gueant.
Last week an open letter from a group of diplomats, published in the newspaper Le Monde, slammed the “amateurism” and “impulsiveness” of Mr Sarkozy’s policy. Former ambassador Jean-Christophe Rufin criticised the “damage” done to France’s image. “Contrary to the announcements trumpeted for the past three years, Europe is powerless, Africa escapes us, the Mediterranean will not talk to us, China has tamed us and Washington ignores us!” wrote the diplomats.
The letter was seen as a response to Mr Sarkozy’s claims that his ambassadors in Arab capitals had failed to foresee the North African unrest.
It is now the more sober Alain Juppe, the former French prime minister, who will be given the job of restoring France’s diplomatic credibility as the country’s new foreign minister. He will seek to ensure France takes the right approach to the pro-democracy movement.
And, significantly, Mr Sarkozy is moving Claude Gueant, his wing-man for years and the driver of his foreign policy, to be interior minister – a move seen as a concession to Alain Juppe, who will want to run foreign affairs his way.
The new Foreign Minister Alain Juppe is now moving fast to try and rectify a string of blunders and to try and restore some cohesion to French foreign policy.
Now comes a French move to win hearts and minds in the new Libya: the first consignment of humanitarian aid. The two planes France sent to the eastern city of Benghazi carried doctors, nurses, medicine and medical equipment to ease the pressure on hospitals in the east of Libya.
French Prime Minister Francois Fillon hailed “the beginning of a massive operation of humanitarian support for the populations of the liberated territories. And you will have seen that France was in the forefront of the decisions taken to sanction Col Gaddafi,” he said. “We were the ones who called on the European Council to adopt a joint position on this matter.”
The French moves are a start and almost forced on them since the writing is already on the wall. Whether Alain Juppe will be able to inject a measure of principle into French foreign policy and lift it up from the level of the pig-trough remains to be seen.
But with Sarkozy’s approval ratings at less than 30% and a difficult presidential election coming up in 2012, his amateurish impulsiveness and his quest for short-term gains may prevent foreign policy from being about anything else.
The abuse of privilege: French Ministers and their “perks”
February 16, 2011
Michèle Alliot-Marie: image wikipedia
That corruption and ethics do not place very high in the French scale of values is at least very true for Government ministers. Exploiting the privileges of position is a tradition which is not only maintained but is staunchly defended. Not only did the French Prime Minister have an all expenses paid holiday at the expense of Mubarak (before he left) including the use of Mabarak’s plane, but the Foreign Minister also happily flew around in the plane of a friend of the deposed Tunisian dictator. Now it is also revealed that her parents (in their nineties) have made lucrative real estate deals with one of the dictator’s Tunisian associates.
If nothing else their choice of benefactors brings their judgements into question. And the French Foreign Minister actually being in Tunisia during the protests does not say much for the the intelligence or anticipation of her staff. She even spoke to Ben Ali on the phone during her vacation!!!!!! No doubt she wished him Bon Voyage.
Perhaps the best way to predict when the next Middle East dictator will topple is to study who is treating a French Minister to a holiday.
François Fillon: image wikipedia
French Foreign Minister Michele Alliot-Marie has defended a property deal between her parents and an associate of the ousted Tunisian president. ….. Earlier Ms Alliot-Marie was criticised for having flown twice on a jet owned by Aziz Miled, who was close to ex-president Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali. She was on holiday in Tunisia during anti-government protests in December. ….
Speaking on Wednesday on the French radio station Europe 1, her father Bernard Marie said Aziz Miled was a long-standing personal friend and “my wife and I are the only ones involved” in the business deal. Le Canard Enchaine reported that Ms Alliot-Marie’s parents, both in their 90s, already owned part of a property company, SCI Ikram, and bought the rest of the shares from Mr Miled while in Tunisia with their daughter. An aide to Ms Alliot-Marie said the minister had had “a brief telephone conversation” with Mr Ben Ali during her holiday. The aide did not elaborate further.
Meanwhile, the French government expressed its “total support” for Ms Alliot-Marie on Wednesday.
Last week French President Nicolas Sarkozy told his government to holiday at home in future. He was responding to the revelations about Ms Alliot-Marie and Prime Minister Francois Fillon, who was criticised for having enjoyed hospitality in Egypt provided by former President Hosni Mubarak. Mr Fillon admitted he took a new year break in Egypt, paid for by Mr Mubarak. The prime minister and his family were given lodgings, used an Egyptian plane for an internal flight and took a boat trip on the Nile, all at Egyptian expense.
Neither has offered to repay the costs of their holidays to the people of Egypt or of Tunisia.
No food crisis in sight: World can feed its 9 billion in 2050
January 13, 2011
Image via Wikipedia
Doomsday proponents will not like this new on-line publication in Nature and are already beginning to object. But I see no resource or food crunch that cannot be addressed by human ingenuity and the development of technology.
Paillard, S., Treyer, S. & Dorin, B. Agrimonde: Scenarios and Challenges for Feeding the World in 2050 (Editions Quae, 2011) doi:10.1038/news.2011.14
Future of food could be bright: French agencies’ study punctures assumptions about the state of global agriculture.
The world will be able to feed the predicted 2050 population of nine billion people, according to two French agricultural research organizations. In a joint report published today, they lay out findings gleaned from 2006 to 2008 that could overturn some current assumptions about the state of global farming.
The report, titledAgrimonde, is published by the French National Institute for Agricultural Research (INRA) and the Centre for International Cooperation in Agronomic Research for Development (CIRAD), both headquartered in Paris. It contains some surprise findings on Africa and other regions — the latest results from an ongoing study by the two research agencies.
Agricultural productivity in Africa doubled between 1961 and 2003 — a finding that overturns most assumptions “and is one of the most surprising results of our work”, Patrick Caron, CIRAD’s director-general for research and strategy, told reporters last night.
African productivity remains the lowest in the world, however, averaging 10,000 kilocalories per hectare (kcal ha–1) compared with 20,000 kcal ha–1 globally and 25,000 kcal ha–1 in Asia. Productivity elsewhere doubled or tripled over the same period.
Asia scored higher on productivity than in other studies, because the agencies looked at aggregate rather than independent annual yields of wheat, rice and other crops, explains Bruno Dorin, an economist at CIRAD and one of the report’s authors. “In Asia, the wheat yield may be lower, but if you take account of rice and other crops grown in the same year, the total yield is higher,” he says.
Another finding to emerge is that major reserves of potential farmland exist across the globe, especially in Africa and Latin America, Dorin says. “The 1.5 billion hectares of land now cultivated could be increased to 4 billion, but this would of course be at the expense of pastures and forests, which are a reservoir of biodiversity and carbon,” he adds.
Read the original article:
http://www.nature.com/news/2011/110112/full/news.2011.14.html
