The Nation Newspaper

Tag: Laurent Fabius

  • Boko Haram: France to seek UN support for Africa force

    France will support a bid by the African Union to win the backing of the United Nations Security Council for its five-nation force fighting the Boko Haram sect, French Foreign Minister, Laurent Fabius, said on Sunday.

    Fabius spoke on a tour of Chad, Cameroon and Niger, countries that have launched operations against the militants who have killed thousands in a six-year war for an Islamic state in northern Nigeria.

    “France’s support for the integrated African reaction force is total. France will support a request of the African Union and other concerned countries for a resolution to be voted by the Security Council,” Reuters quoted Fabius as saying in the Niger capital, Niamey.

    The AU authorized the force combining Nigeria, Chad, Cameroon, Niger and Benin last month at a summit in Ethiopia. A Security Council resolution could give it a UN mandate, senior African officials said.

    The force was set up in part because of a perception that Nigeria was failing to defeat the militants, who have launched a string of cross border attacks in the Lake Chad area in recent weeks, as well as killing hundreds in Nigeria.

    “It is indispensable that Nigeria engages fully in the struggle against Boko Haram. Clearly, the last few actions of the Nigerian government are encouraging,” Fabius told a news conference.

    Nigerian forces backed by air strikes seized the northeastern border town of Baga from Boko Haram on Saturday, the military said.

    Baga is at Nigeria’s border with Chad, Niger and Cameroon and was the headquarters of a multinational force comprising troops from all four countries. Its recapture was an important victory, one of several in the past two weeks.

  • Boko Haram: French minister tours West Africa

    Boko Haram: French minister tours West Africa

    French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius began a tour of West African countries yesterday to show France’s support for their battle against the Islamist extremist group Boko Haram.

    Launched in Nigeria in 2009, Boko Haram fighters have recently spread their insurgency to neighbouring Chad, Cameroon and Niger, which have now been drawn into the battle to stop the extremists.

    On his first stop in Chad, Fabius met with the country’s President Idriss Deby Itno, who has sent Chadian forces to Cameroon, and this month also deployed Chad’s army directly into Nigeria for the first time to fight the Islamist insurgents.

    “Chad has done the most to assure stability in a region that unfortunately is unstable,” Fabius said, adding that Boko Haram poses “an extremely heavy economic risk for Chad.”

    With Chad being a landlocked country, Fabius said it was very important that the vital route remain open between N’Djamena and the Cameroonian port of Douala, which has come under attack by the extremists.

    He added, however, that France did not envision any direct intervention in its former colonies, saying France can provide tactical support and “coordination among the countries” as well as intelligence information.

    Fabius’ trip to the region, which will also include Cameroon and Niger, is also aimed at raising international funds to battle Boko Haram’s spreading insurgency.

    Nigeria and its neighbours reached an agreement earlier this month to deploy a multi-national force of some 8,700 soldiers to fight the Islamists in the region around Lake Chad.

    Boko Haram has waged a six-year insurgency aiming to create a hardline Islamic state in northeast Nigeria, a conflict that has claimed some 13,000 lives.

  • Air Algerie AH5017: Pilots ‘asked to turn back’

    Air Algerie AH5017: Pilots ‘asked to turn back’

    The French Foreign Minister, Laurent Fabius, has revealed that the pilots of an airliner that crashed in Mali last Thursday had asked to turn back.

    Mr Fabius said the crew of Air Algerie flight AH5017 requested to return to Burkina Faso after initially asking to change course due to bad weather.

    The plane’s two flight data recorders have arrived in France.  The jet was flying to Algeria when it crashed in Mali, killing all 118 aboard, including 54 French citizens.  France has taken the leading role in the investigation.

    The French investigators at the crash site were facing “extremely difficult conditions,” Mr Fabius said

    French flags flew at half-mast on Monday as the country began three days of mourning for the victims

    “What we know for sure is that the weather was bad that night, that the plane crew had asked to change route then to turn back before all contact was lost,” Mr Fabius said on Monday.

    A team of French investigators is currently sifting through the plane’s wreckage in Mali, but Mr Fabius said they were facing “extremely difficult conditions”.

    “It’s a long, fastidious and extremely complex job,” he added.

    French, Malian and Dutch soldiers from a UN peacekeeping force (MINUSMA) have secured the site, about 80 km (50 miles) south of the Malian town of Gossi, near the Burkina Faso border.

    Earlier on Monday, a French official confirmed that the two flight data recorders had arrived in France and were now being examined by experts.

    One of the devices was retrieved almost as soon as rescuers arrived on the spot, while the second was found late Saturday.

    A source close to the investigation told the AFP news agency that one of them was badly damaged on the outside.

    But Martine Del Bono, a spokeswoman for the French aviation investigation office, refused to comment on their condition, telling press: “At this stage, we cannot say anymore.”

    Even if both “black boxes” are in good condition, French Transport Minister Thierry Mariani has warned that analysing the flight data and cockpit conversations could take “weeks”.

    French flags were lowered to half-mast on Monday for three days in memory of the dead.

    Nearly half of those on board were French. There were also 27 from Burkina Faso and further passengers from, among others, Lebanon, Algeria, Canada and Germany. One victim was British.

    Among the French contingent on board flight AH5017 was a family of 10.

    The plane, a McDonnell Douglas MD-83, had been chartered from Spanish airline Swiftair and all six members of the crew were Spanish.

     

  • Chibok: France to send agents for rescue operation

    Chibok: France to send agents for rescue operation

    France on Wednesday offered to send security service agents to Nigeria to help recover more than 200 schoolgirls kidnapped by the Boko Haram sect, Foreign Minister, Laurent Fabius, said.
    With more than 4,000 troops operating between Mali to the west and Central African Republic to the east, Paris has a major interest in preventing Nigeria’s security situation from deteriorating, having previously voiced concerns Boko Haram could spread further north into the Sahel.
    “The President has instructed … to put the (intelligence) services at the disposal of Nigeria and neighbouring countries,” Reuters quoted Fabius as saying to lawmakers.
    “This morning he asked us to contact the Nigerian president to tell him that a specialised unit with all the means we have in the region was at the disposal of Nigeria to help find and recover these young girls.”
    Boko Haram kidnapped more than 200 schoolgirls last month and has threatened to sell them into slavery.
    “In the face of such ignominy France must react. This crime cannot be left unpunished,” Fabius said.

  • Freed French hostages leave Niger

    Four Frenchmen held hostage in the Sahara desert by al Qaeda-linked gunmen for three years left Niger on a French government plane on Wednesday morning.

    The men, who were kidnapped in 2010 while working for French nuclear group Areva and a subsidiary of construction group Vinci in northern Niger, were freed on Tuesday after secret talks.

    A Reuters’ correspondent at Niamey airport said the four men boarded the jet with two French ministers, including Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius, dispatched to pick them up.

    “I am very happy. It was difficult, the ordeal of a lifetime,” said Thierry Dol, one of the freed men.

    Fabius said the men were in a state of shock, having been isolated for so long. “They slept well, but on the floor as they are not yet able to sleep on mattresses,” he said.

    The men’s release gave Francois Hollande a boost a day after a poll showed he had become the most unpopular French president on record.

    No details have been given on the circumstances of the quartet’s release but Niger’s President Mohamadou Issoufou said they had been retrieved from northern Mali.

    Thousands of French troops were dispatched to Mali’s desert north earlier this year to prevent Islamists and criminal gangs operating in the zone who occupied the region in 2012 from extending their reach further south.

     

  • French jets bomb northern Mali

    French jets bomb northern Mali

    French warplanes have carried out air strikes in Mali’s far north as they try to secure the final rebel stronghold of Kidal after a three-week offensive.

    At least 30 jets targeted Islamist militants’ training and communication centres around Tessalit – a mountainous area near the Algerian border, BBC reports.

    French President Francois Hollande has pledged to help rebuild Mali after the rebels who seized its north are beaten.

    But there are fears the fighters could re-group in the mountains near Kidal.

    It is believed that several French civilian hostages are being held by militants in the area, making the situation even more delicate.

    French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius told France Inter radio on Monday that the air strikes were aimed at “destroying the bases and depots” of the rebels.

    He said: “They cannot stay there a long time unless they have new supplies.”

    Although French troops captured Kidal’s airport on Wednesday, rebels from a Tuareg group who want their own homeland in northern Mali – the MNLA – still have control of the town itself.

    Malian Interim President Dioncounda Traore has offered to hold talks with the MNLA in order to help secure Kidal.