The Nation Newspaper

Tag: Jean-Yves Le Drian

  • U.S. tasks Saudi on regional policy

    U.S. tasks Saudi on regional policy

    Saudi Arabia should be “more measured and a bit more thoughtful’’ in its handling of conflicts in the Middle East, U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said on Friday in an unusually blunt criticism of the historic U.S. ally.

    Tillerson criticised Riyadh’s handling of conflicts in Yemen and relations with Lebanon and Qatar, and repeated U.S. President Donald Trump’s call for Riyadh to end its blockade of Yemen.

    “I think in respect to Saudi Arabia’s engagement with Qatar, how they’re handling the Yemen war that they’re engaged in, the Lebanon situation.

    “We would encourage them to be a bit more measured and a bit more thoughtful in those action, to, I think, fully consider the consequences,’’ Tillerson said.

    Saudi Arabia has taken an increasingly active stance in the region, trying to face down allies of rival power Iran, since Crown Prince Mohammed Salman became the power behind the throne.

    It is leading a military coalition in Yemen against Houthi rebels and has cut relations and trade links with neighbouring Qatar, which supports Islamist movements such as the Muslim Brotherhood that Riyadh views with suspicion.

    But Tillerson, speaking in Paris after a meeting with his French counterpart Jean-Yves Le Drian, had warmer words for the King’s programme of domestic reforms.

    “The U.S. strongly supports the reforms that are being undertaken in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

    “We think they’re important for the future of Saudi Arabia, in terms of not just its stability but also its prosperity for the future,’’ he said.

    NAN

  • EU foreign ministers signal steadfast support for Iran nuclear deal

    EU foreign ministers signal steadfast support for Iran nuclear deal

    Several Foreign Ministers of the European Union ( EU ) on Monday signalled their resolve to keep the Iran nuclear deal intact after U.S. President Donald Trump cast doubt on U.S. support for the deal.

    “The EU does not see any alternatives to the existing deal,’’ foreign ministers said at the sidelines of a meeting in Luxembourg, after Trump refused to certify the deal on Friday, throwing continued U.S. support for it into question.

    However, EU foreign policy Chief Federica Mogherini has said she is not considering alternatives.

    “I’m not considering alternatives, we do not expect the deal to be finished, we expect the deal to be preserved, continued to be implemented by all sides.

    “This is a strong European Union( EU ) commitment,’’ Mogherini said.

    While Trump’s announcement does not mean that the U.S. has withdrawn from the agreement, it is now up to the U.S. Congress to decide if sanctions on Iran will be reintroduced, which would put the deal at risk.

    “We believe that it is wrong to destroy the agreement,’’ German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel noted.

    French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian warned that “an act of rupture would be extremely damaging.”

    He noted, however, that there were issues that remained to be discussed with Iran such as its ballistic programme and the way the country behaves in regional issues.

    NAN

  • France urges closer regional collaboration against Boko Haram

    France’s defence minister on Monday called for Nigeria and its neighbours to set up a military liaison committee to better coordinate their response to the growing regional threat posed by the Boko Haram sect.

    Boko Haram fighters have stepped up their attacks across much of Nigeria’s northeast in the past year, raiding villages, kidnapping children and seizing territory for their declared caliphate, Reuters reports.

    The sect operations have increasingly spilled over Nigeria’s borders into Niger to the north and Cameroon to the east, and has left Chad fearing it could also be dragged into the conflict.

    Last May in Paris, the leaders of all four countries agreed to work together more closely, but despite the promises there appears to have been little tangible coordination between Abuja and neighbouring governments.

    “There is a serious threat to the integrity of Nigeria and for its neighbours be it Cameroon, Niger or Chad,” Jean-Yves Le Drian told reporters at an Africa security forum in the Senegalese capital Dakar.

    “For this reason, we’d like to see a military liaison committee set up between the authorities of these four countries to help coordinate their action and their capacity to respond,” he said.

    He said France was ready to provide several officers to help those efforts.

    The four countries, whose borders meet at Lake Chad, an area that has become a Boko Haram stronghold, pledged in July to mobilise a joint force of 2,800 soldiers to tackle the group.

    That force has yet to be put in place, and while the countries have collaborated at times, observers criticise a lack of cohesion in the effort to defeat the insurgents.

    “The action should be proportional with the magnitude of what’s at stake,” the United Nations special envoy to the Sahel region Hiroute Gebre Selassie told Reuters. “There are efforts, but there is nothing that suggests to me that the magnitude of (the problem) is reducing. On the contrary.”

  • CAR descending into chaos – UN

    The Central African Republic (CAR) is descending into “complete chaos,” the United Nations deputy secretary general has warned, calling for urgent action.

    Jan Eliasson urged the Security Council to strengthen the African Union-led force in the country, and to turn it into a UN peacekeeping operation.

    The BBC reports that the CAR has been in turmoil since rebels seized power in March.

    France, the former colonial power, has confirmed it would contribute hundreds of extra troops to the force.

    “France will support this African mission with about 1,000 soldiers,” Defence Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian told Europe 1 radio on Tuesday.

    He added that – as was the case in Mali – the troops would be deployed for “a short period, in the range of six months.”

    France currently has about 400 troops stationed in the CAR capital, Bangui.

     

  • Hunt for French soldier’s attacker

    French police are hunting a man who attacked a soldier on patrol with two colleagues in the La Defense business district of Paris on Saturday evening, BBC reports.

    Private First Class Cedric Cordier was approached from behind and stabbed in the neck with a small-bladed knife.

    Defence Minister Jean Yves Le Drian told reporters that he had been targeted because of his profession.

    But President Francois Hollande refused to make any direct link with the murder of a soldier in London on Wednesday.

    Two men arrested on suspicion of murder at the scene of the London attack remain in custody in hospital in a stable condition. Michael Adebolajo and Michael Adebowale were shot and wounded by police.

    On Saturday, British police arrested three other men on suspicion of conspiracy to murder the soldier, Drummer Lee Rigby, who was not on duty. A sixth man was arrested on Thursday.

    Meanwhile, the Kenyan government denied allegations that its security forces had abused Mr. Adebolajo, insisting he had never been there.

    Photographs of him in a courtroom in Kenya more than two years ago have been published. He is alleged to have been arrested for seeking training from the Islamist militant group, al-Shabab, in Somalia.

    In Saturday’s attack in Paris, Pfc Cordier was on patrol with colleagues from the 4e Regiment de Chasseurs de Gap and police officers at La Defense’s metro and train station, when he was approached from behind and stabbed in the neck with a knife or a box-cutter.

     

  • Abduction: France will not negotiate with Boko Haram

    Abduction: France will not negotiate with Boko Haram

    France will not negotiate with gunmen claiming to be from the Boko Haram sect who have taken a French family of seven hostage, Defence Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said on Tuesday.

    The three adults and four children were seized in Cameroon’s far north near the Nigerian border last week, Reuters reports.

    In a video posted online on Monday, the gunmen threatened to kill them unless authorities in Nigeria and Cameroon released Muslim militants held there.

    “We do not negotiate on that kind of basis, with these kind of groups,” Le Drian told RTL radio. “We will use all (other) possible means to ensure that these and other (French) hostages are freed.”

     

  • Cameroon claims French hostages ‘now in Nigeria’

    Cameroon claims French hostages ‘now in Nigeria’

    The Islamist militants believed to have abducted a French family of seven, including four children, in Cameroon on Tuesday have taken them into Nigeria, Cameroon’s foreign ministry said.

    Reuters reports that the abduction highlights the growing risk of attacks on French nationals and interests in Africa since Paris sent forces into Mali last month to help oust Islamist rebels occupying the country’s north.

    “The kidnappers have crossed the Nigerian border with their hostages,” junior minister Joseph Dion Ngute said in a statement late on Tuesday.

    He added that security in the Dabanga area, 10 km (six miles) from the Nigerian border, had been reinforced and “urgent measures” put in place to find the hostages.

    It is the first case of foreigners being seized in the mostly Muslim north of Cameroon, a former French colony.

    Speaking on French television on Wednesday, French Defence Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said all the evidence pointed to Nigerian Islamist group Boko Haram, but there did not appear to be a direct link with France’s intervention in Mali.

    “We believe it’s the Boko Haram group that carried out the kidnapping, but we don’t know for sure. Unfortunately, terror breeds terror,” Le Drian told France 2 television.

    “Now this group …has started taking children.”

    France intervened in Mali last month after Islamist rebels seized control of the north of the country and pushed south towards the capital Bamako.

    “It’s these groups that are calling for the same fundamentalism, whether it’s in Mali or in Somalia or in Nigeria. And it’s these groups that threaten our security,” Le Drian said.

    French President Francois Hollande said the kidnappings would not stop France from pursuing its operation in Mali.