[Shadow_Group] Fw: Analysis: Israel hand seen in Ivorian clash

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 http://www.wpherald.com/Africa/storyview.php?StoryID=20041117-021251-983<http://www.wpherald.com/Africa/storyview.php?StoryID=20041117-021251-983>
2r
 
 
Analysis: Israel hand seen in Ivorian clash
By Martin Sieff 
UPI Senior News Analyst  
Published November 17, 2004 
  
WASHINGTON -- New allegations that Israeli arms dealers helped the army
of Ivory Coast attack a French military base look likely to reignite
long-tense relations between Israel and France.  

    "Israeli mercenaries assisting the Ivory Coast army operated unmanned
aircraft that aided the aerial bombing of a French base in the country on
Nov.9," France's TF-1 television station reported Wednesday.  

    Also Wednesday, the respected Paris newspaper Le Monde reported that
a group of 46 Israeli advisers were running an electronic-surveillance
center for the Ivory Coast army, which has turned on French peacekeepers
invited in by the government two years ago.  

    Israel Radio cited an Israeli defense source as denying the reports.
The attacks on French bases cost the lives of at least nine French
soldiers.  

    "Israel is unaware of such a thing," the Jerusalem Post quoted the
Israeli Foreign Ministry saying.  

    Earlier, French troops at Abidjan airport in Ivory Coast, now Cote
D'Ivoire, seized an Israeli-built drone, or unmanned-surveillance
aircraft. In September, France called on Israel to clarify its role in
Ivory Coast.  

    On Nov. 9, the Israeli Defense Ministry's Director General Amos Yaron
promised to stop supplying military equipment to the army in the poor
West African nation.  

    "The decision was made in the light of recent developments in this
country and at the request of the French government," a Defense Ministry
statement said. "It will remain in effect until the situation in that
country becomes clear."  

    The allegations are political dynamite for many reas ons. France was
so incensed by the deadly Nov.9 air attack on its troops it responded
with overwhelming force, wiping out the entire Ivory Coast air force. In
retaliation, enraged mobs attacked French troops and citizens in the
former French colony and France evacuated more than 5,000 Westerners in
the country.  

    The U.N. Security Council Monday approved an arms embargo on Ivory
Coast, a move that was a blow to President Laurent Gbagbo, who had
pledged to rebuild the air force. On Wednesday, the African Union called
for an urgent meeting of its Peace and Security Council to prevent Ivory
Coast from collapsing into full-scale civil war like its West African
neighbors, Liberia and Sierra Leone. The AU issued a statement that
called for "the early convening" of the PSC "to review developments in
Ivory Coast and agree on steps to be taken to contribute tot eh
restoration of lasting peace and security."  

    France has significant economic interests in Ivory Coast as well
long-time ties to the country, but in recent months its 2002 intervention
there has become a hot potato and President Jacques Chirac might well
want to divert popular attention from the casualties that French troops
have suffered.  

    Israel makes some of the most advanced unmanned drone surveillance
aircraft in the world and has been a significant arms exporter to
sub-Saharan Africa for more than 35 years. But the Israelis are not eager
to infuriate the French government or rally the French public around
Chirac who has often clashed with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon on
many issues. France is one of the most powerful nations in the 25-country
European Union. It also has the largest Jewish community in Europe and
one that has been targeted by Islamist extremists from the country's
Algerian-Muslim community. The last thing French Jews would want is for
Israel, and by implication them, to be scapegoats for mainstream French
nationalists because of the deaths of French troops in Ivory Coast.  

    Tensions between Israel and France are based on serious policy
differences between the governments but there is much more personal
animus to them than between Israel and most other members of the EU. A
few years ago at a large dinner, France's ambassador to Britain was
reported as having described Israel as "a shitty little country." More
recently, Sharon enraged the French government and many Frenchmen by
calling on French Jews to immigrate to Israel for their own safety. Few
took his advice.  

    The tensions are particularly ironic as no nation did more to help
Israel during the first and most dangerous 20 years of its struggle for
existence than France. Under both the Fourth and Fifth Republics, Israel
received more important weapons for its army and air force from France
than from any other country. Israel won the 1967 Six Day War with then
state-of-the-art Mirage fighter-bombers supplied by France when neither
the United States nor any other European nation would or could supply
comparable weapons.  

    Ivory Coast is the largest cocoa exporting nation in the world and
its resources have long made it a magnet for Westerners eager to do
business. But Israel is now finding out, as France already has, that the
messy complications involved may not be worth it. 
 
 
    
 




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