Thalif Deen reports in the Inter Press News Service:
UNITED NATIONS, Feb 3 (IPS) - France, the former colonial ruler of Cote d'Ivoire, is being lambasted for manipulating the U.N. Security Council to politically and militarily isolate the West African nation, which has been ravaged by an ongoing civil war.
In an unusual arrangement, French troops have the right to act alone and do not come under the military authority of UNOCI.
The French are ”too tainted” by their historic neo-colonial relationship to Cote d'Ivoire. ”The French clearly have an interest in retaining their role as the hegemonic power over their former colonies,” he added.
Addressing a U.N. press conference last month, Ambassador Philippe Djangone-Bi of Cote d'Ivoire told reporters that the Security Council should integrate the French orce into UNOCI.
”The sooner unified command and action was achieved, the sooner UNOCI would succeed in its actions,” he added.
If unified command is applied to most U.N. peacekeeping missions, ”why is Cote d'Ivoire an exception?” he asked.
A Washington-based group that calls itself Friends of Democratic Governments says that colonial rule in Cote d'Ivoire ended more than 40 years ago, ”but France and its embedded corporate interests refuse to let go.”
”The same French government that opposed 'regime change' in Iraq is using its influence in the United Nations to undermine a democratically-elected president in West Africa,” the group says in its website.
In respsonse to the advertisement placed by the Friends of Democratic Governments, a spokesperson for the French Embassy in Washington said:
"[It] is not France who decided to have an embargo on Ivory Coast. This is the entire international community embodied by the [U.N.] Security Council. And, of course, the arms embargo applies to every possible Ivorian party -- not just the Ivorian army, but every militia, every group."
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