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Pastimes : Kosovo -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Yaacov who wrote (17263)	11/6/2000 4:55:50 AM
From: GUSTAVE JAEGER	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 17770

Re: French? They can't wipe their ass with both hands, how can they strike the US interest? That's the major question! How could France successfully thwart the American steamroller in Africa? Americans should bear in mind that France is --much to her chagrin-- a second-fiddle power, that is to say she's got much less buttons to turn to further her agenda than Uncle Sam.... Indeed, on its path to displace France in Central Africa the US doesn't need to resort to shameful tactics like, say, blowing up the French embassies in Senegal and Brazzaville! The US has a panoply of other, more sociable ways to smoothly achieve its aim. For instance, the US can raise its USAID package for Africa by a smidgin or name-drop "Africa" in some key presidential addresses or.... you name it! On the other hand the French know that they'll always be cast as the (neo-)colonialist bogeyman. However they spin it, their presence in Africa gives off a sense of quaintness.... Add to that personal grievances and vengeful mercenaries (those who've been routed out of Kisangani in 1997) and you get enough clues to brew a terrorist plot against US interests in Africa. Of course, that is not to say that the French President gave DPS mercenaries the official green light to blast the US embassies. At that level of power politics, executive topsiders don't want to know about "dirty tricks". After all, that was the main lesson the French learnt in the Rainbow Warrior fiasco: after New Zealand nailed France as the mastermind behind the bombing of Greenpeace's flagship, French authorities had no firebreak to prevent the scandal from backfiring on the highest executive level --ie l'Elysee and Matignon. Admiral Lacoste, the then head of DGSE, was hauled over the coals but Defense Minister Charles Hernu and PM Laurent Fabius got the media flak, whereas President Mitterrand was spared, only just. Thence French intelligence devised to re-engineer its special operations' modus operandi: the "Rainbow" fiasco demonstrated that France could no longer operate abroad with plain-clothes agents and James-Bond-like scuba divers.... A kind of smoke screen strategy had to be worked out. Shell organizations had to be set up to shield France's official secret services from any undesirable feedback. And that's where the far right came in: Mitterrand got acquainted with Mr Bernard Courcelle and my guess is that, together, they agreed on setting up the infamous DPS. Courcelle served as the liaison officer between the rogue DPS and the official DPSD (the French DIA) while the media and public opinion were fed with the cover yarn that DPS was merely the security agency of J.-M. Le Pen's Front National and therefore was only active in France and not involved in overseas/African shenanigans.... Gus.