Serge,
I'm afraid it's not a ''Belgian joke''... Tell me, was the bombing of the Rainbow Warrior, Greenpeace's flagship, a French joke? Want a little reminder, huh? Here you're:
greenpeace.org
Excerpt:
As it emerged that the bombing was a deliberate act of sabotage, there was little doubt in Greenpeace minds who was responsible. Two days after the bombing the French Embassy in Wellington issued a statement echoing the flat denials emanating from Paris. 'In no way is France involved,' it declared. 'The French Government doesn't deal with its opponents in such ways.' But within a few days police had arrested French secret service agents Alain Mafart and Dominique Prieur as they tried to return their van to an Auckland hire company. While they were held in custody, the charter yacht Ouvea, carrying
another team of agents implicated in the bombing, sailed to Norfolk Island and then disappeared a few days out to sea heading north for Tahiti. Her crew was reportedly picked up by the French nuclear submarine Rubis, which turned up in Tahiti on July 22 - the first time a French nuclear submarine had been known to enter the South Pacific.
The international outcry pressured the French Government into setting up its own inquiry. After less than three weeks the head of the inquiry, Bernard Tricot, a former Director-General of the Elysee Palace, announced, 'On the basis of the information available to me at this time, I do not believe there was any French responsibility.' The French agents caught in New Zealand were merely there to spy on Greenpeace, Tricot implied, not to bomb them.
Hostility towards the French Government grew after President Mitterrand threatened that any protesters at Moruroa that year would be arrested, and refused to meet with Greenpeace International director, David McTaggart. Rather than cool the growing international controversy, the transparently inadequate Tricot report served only to fuel the fires of indignation and further undermine the French Government's credibility, so that a second inquiry was ordered on 5 September, but it was already too late.
Following claims in the London Sunday Times that President Mitterrand had known of the bombing plan, and implicitly, therefore had authorised it, French Defence Minister Charles Hernu resigned and Admiral Pierre Lacoste, director of the DGSE, France's intelligence and covert action bureau, was sacked. Within days Prime Minister Fabius admitted French secret service agents had bombed the Rainbow Warrior under orders. It was, said New Zealand Prime Minister David Lange, nothing more than 'a sordid act of international state-backed terrorism'.
The above document is part of the following Greenpeace webfiles:
greenpeace.org
Now, was New Zealand at war with France in 1985? How would have the mainstream media ''packaged'' such a story were the real culprits not been arrested? At that time Greenpeace was like the US today: so many ennemies! So many sensible leads!
If the French secret agents wouldn't have been caught, the local press would likely have accused some private oil interest... or maybe the Japanese? After all, these Japs were sick of Greenpeace's anti-whale hunting campaigns. Or maybe it could be some banana republic of the Third World that wanted to hang on on some unecological activity?
And what was the message anyway? Plain and simple: France wanted to make it clear that it owned a global post-colonial empire --from South American Guyana to Guadeloupe to New Caledonia to... you name it! Hence, Aussies and New Zelanders'd better mind their own business!
Oh!BTW, what was newly elected President J. Chirac's first move? Well... if I remember, in the Fall of 1995, France was on the newspapers' frontpage again: it bluntly resumed its nuclear testing in Mururoa!
Coming back to Congo, did you notice the timing of the so-called rebel strike against the Kabila regime? The rebels --whose the puppetmasters are Uganda and Rwanda-- seemed to be in a hurry: the MonicaGate was ending... So, they launched their blitzkrieg on Western Congo (Matadi harbor and the Inga Dam) a few days before August 17. Because they knew that as soon as President Clinton'd have testified before the grand jury, the White House (which was instrumental in setting up the new Congolese regime) would be back on track and able to more openly support President Kabila.
But then the simultaneous blow-up of 2 US embassies in what was supposed to be a geapolitical sanctuary, that is Western Africa, forced the US to comply with a low-profile policy in Central Africa. President Clinton couldn't afford to mess around in too many places at the same time! To be sure, the US immediately evacuated their citizens out of Kinshasa when the Congolese civil war unfolded, and Clinton had no time to care with Congo: he had to reassert his presidency. There was only one possible exit strategy for him: the fight against international terrorism and the usual blah-blah about Libya, Iran, Sudan and so on...
Now, let me get clear with all this: there's no question of mixing up all the different terrorist threats! As I told you, w're navigating in a twilight environment... sure enough, the bombing of a US military base in Saudi Arabia (Darhan?) was likely a local, Arab plot. But then again, was the Oklahoma bombing a muslim plot? Yet the first suspect who's been arrested following this outrage was an ethnic American with an Arab background! He was arrested in London (UK) and sent back to the US. So, one last advice: if you want to cash in the FBI's $2M reward maybe you shouldn't fly right away to Afghanistan...
Gustave. |
