posted November 10, 2004 01:43 PM            

ABIDJAN, Ivory Coast – French forces opened fire Tuesday as protesters massed between the Ivory Coast president's home and an evacuation post for foreigners. A hospital reported seven people were killed and more than 200 wounded.
French military officials said they were assessing the events, and refused immediate comment.

At least four days of confrontations have killed at least 20 other people, wounded 700 and shut down cocoa exports from the world's largest producer.

The clash took place as thousands of loyalists massed outside the home of President Laurent Gbagbo, next to a hotel that the French have converted into a temporary evacuation center.

Dr. Sie Podipte at Cocody Hospital said the facility was treating more than 200 wounded and that seven people had died.

South African President Thabo Mbeki met with Gbagbo earlier Tuesday, launching an African effort to rein in chaos that has erupted in this west African nation.

The U.N. Security Council, African Union, European Union and a bloc of West African leaders have all condemned Gbagbo's government in the violence, which began when Ivory Coast warplanes killed nine French peacekeepers and an American aid worker in an air strike on the rebel-held north.

France, Ivory Coast's former colonial ruler, wiped out the nation's small air force in retaliation, sparking anti-French rampages by mobs of thousands in the fiercely nationalist south.

Mbeki said Gbagbo had recommitted to tension-easing measures agreed to in past accords in the country's civil war. A year-old cease-fire ended last week when the government opened three days of bombing of the rebel-held north.

Mbeki declared himself "really very, very pleased" and said he would report back to the African Union for consultations on its next steps in the crisis.

Talks took place at Gbagbo's home.

Some of the 1,300 French and other foreign civilians evacuated from their homes by the French military amid looting and burning stared out at the protesters from a protective ring of barbed wire around the hotel.

"We are not going to leave," one loyalist outside the French temporary base said, adding that protesters would take shifts to eat. "If I get the French, I can eat them," he said.

Protesters tried to pull down the barbed wire around the French evacuation point but scattered when two French snipers moved forward and drew beads on them.

After securing Abidjan's airport and bridges over the weekend, French forces on Tuesday appeared to have withdrawn from at least one main bridge in the lagoon-bordered city.

An Associated Press Television News cameraman saw a crowd surround one U.N. vehicle that ventured onto the bridge and kick it until the car withdrew.

Cocoa traders said the violence has shut down cocoa exports, closing ports that ship more than 40 percent of the world's raw material for chocolate.

Clashes that have pitted the government and supporters against French forces come at the peak of Ivory Coast's main harvest, with production last year at 1.4 million tons.

Violence has closed the country's two main ports, in Abidjan and San Pedro, since Saturday afternoon, traders and other officials told The Associated Press, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Cocoa buyers are not venturing out into the bush to buy cocoa, they said.

On Monday, top Ivory Coast and French generals jointly appealed for protesters to go home despite a day of urgent alarms on state radio and TV asking loyalists to mass at Gbagbo's home and a nearby broadcast center.

The TV and radio appeals came after French armored vehicles moved into position at the commandeered Hotel Ivoire, with one armored vehicle at one point making a wrong turn and approaching Gbagbo's house directly, the French acknowledged.

"Everything should go back to normal. ... It is absolutely not a matter of ousting President Laurent Gbagbo," French mission commander Gen. Henri Poncet said on state TV, alongside Ivory Coast army chief of staff Gen. Mathias Doue.

French leaders have said they hold Gbagbo, installed in an uprising by his supporters in 2000, after an aborted vote count in presidential elections, personally responsible in the air strike Saturday and subsequent anti-foreigner rampages.

French Defense Minister Michele Alliot-Marie, after a visit Monday to wounded French servicemen flown to Paris for medical care, said their witness accounts suggested the attack was premeditated.

"They all told me that the Ivorian plane passed two times over the [French military base] building and fired on the third pass," she told reporters at St. Mande military hospital outside Paris.

At the United Nations, Security Council diplomats late Monday weighed a French-backed draft resolution for an arms embargo on Ivory Coast and a travel ban and asset freeze against those blocking peace, violating human rights, and preventing the disarmament of combatants.

France has 4,000 peacekeepers in Ivory Coast, where a civil war launched in September 2002 has split the nation between rebel north and loyalist south.

About 6,000 U.N. troops also are deployed to man a buffer zone and try to keep the peace in West Africa's former economic powerhouse, seen as vital to regional efforts to recover from 1990s civil wars.

The bombing of the French military post Saturday came on the third day of Ivory Coast airstrikes on rebel positions, breaking a more than year-old cease-fire.

Red Cross official Kim Gordon-Bates told The Associated Press that rampages in Abidjan alone had injured more than 600. Loyalist mobs on Monday blocked to set up an emergency clinic for the injured, he said.

posted November 10, 2004 01:50 PM            

French President Jacques Chirac is a "misleader" who has made a rush to war in the Ivory Coast, causing needless deaths and injuries to innocent Ivorians and to the ill-equipped and poorly supplied French soldiers.

The horrific deaths of these soldiers are causing great sorrow to French mothers and fathers, and sowing seeds of doubt among untold millions of French citizens about this unnecessary war.

This war is a remnant of French militaristic and colonial oppressive power in the world. It is indeed the wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time.

There is no threat to France from the Ivory Coast, and Chirac has acted unilaterally, without taking the time to work with our allies to raise a broad international coalition that would pass the global test. He has taken his eye off the ball of the real threat of global terrorism.

He has used excessive force of enormous magnitude in destroying the entire Air Force of the Ivory Coast. He has compounded his original arrogant error of sending troops by sending even more poor, young French soldiers to die on this cruel battlefield. I seriously doubt that Chirac's own children or grandchildren will be sent to fight in this poorly planned, incompetently run war.

Chirac's true motives in starting this unnecessary bloodbath are to steal the rich cocoa crop of the Ivory Coast, and to give no-bid billion-dollar contracts to his business cronies.

It is rumored that Chirac will even resume the military draft to raise enough troops to fight the growing insurgency in this far-off country.

These Ivorian freedom fighters are now threatening the lives of French citizens, and have already caused the death of another foreign national. Thus, their innocent blood will solely be on the hands of President Chirac.

Chirac has appealed for more help from the U.N., and the Security Council has bravely authored several new resolutions and condemnations of the fighting, calling for an end to the conflict. They have backed up their resolutions with the threat of an embargo and the the authorization to use "all necessary means" to to keep the peace. U.N. peacekeeping troops are on the ground there, but have not been involved in any of the hostilities.

I call for French misleader Chirac to prevent further bloodshed by pulling all French troops out of the Ivory Coast. He should give peace a chance, and if that doesn't work, I would be glad to assist him in calling an international summit. At this global summit, we will seek to understand the oppressed feelings of the Ivorian people, and look for ways of waging a more sensitive conflict.

Signed,
John F. Kerry

P.S. Am I eligible to run for president of France?

posted November 10, 2004 09:41 PM              

see ... www.linda-goodman.com/ubb/Forum16/HTML/000892.html

posted November 10, 2004 10:16 PM            

If the President didn't say it in public, how would anyone here have access to a private conversation?

Now, I'm willing to be convinced otherwise but it's going to take more than so and so said that so and so said that so and so said to convince me.

A link to a reliable source, which has been the standard here for some time for those wishing to be taken seriously would do it for me...with emphasis on "reliable".

posted November 10, 2004 10:22 PM              

quote:

---

Anyone got that reliable source I mentioned?

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posted November 10, 2004 10:35 PM              

quote:

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Still waiting patiently for Jwhop to post something fun about the Ivory Coast.

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Oh! NOw I get it!

...that is...why Tink said FINALLY!

.........................................

Note to jwhop.......hey guy, do you pay attention to punctuation marks????

You'll notice that I placed a question mark (?) at the end of my sentence, indicating that I was "guessing" rather than coming up with an answer, when I said, ..."finally another crazy man?" and not speaking for or reading Tink's mind...I was merely making a guess about to what she was referring...*sigh*

Rainbow

posted November 10, 2004 11:27 PM            

Perhaps you would enjoy seeing them TINK but the radioactive fallout would be immense.

The entire staff of the NY Times would go into cardiac arrest...as would the US State Department.

posted November 11, 2004 09:43 AM            

Cheese-eating surrender monkeys, eh? Well, Molly Ivins is no friend of the President and never misses a chance to bash Bush. Wonder why she passed up this splendid opportunity to bash Bush for referring to the French as Cheese eating surrender monkeys? That is, if Bush ever said that.

So here's Molly, scolding those who belittle the French for their military valor. Notice, she doesn't mention the President.

If you would care to read the whole article, you can go here and sign up.
http://www.dfw.com/mld/startelegram/news/columnists/molly_ivins/5222243.htm

Posted on Thu, Feb. 20, 2003
Cheese-eating surrender monkeys, eh?

By Molly Ivins

Creators Syndicate

We have been enjoying a lovely little spate of French-bashing here lately. Jonah Goldberg of National Review, who admits that French-bashing is "shtick" (as it is to many American comedians), has popularized the phrase "cheese-eating surrender monkeys" to describe the French.

It gets a lot less attractive than that.

George Will saw fit to include in his latest Newsweek column this joke: "How many Frenchmen does it take to defend Paris? No one knows, it's never been tried."......

Here's another Bush hater that would surely credit Bush with the phrase Cheese eating surrender monkeys...if they only could.

The Death of Local News

By Paul Schmelzer, AlterNet. Posted April 23, 2003.

The corporate tactics of the Sinclair Broadcast Group offers a glimpse of the post-deregulation world where local news may be produced in one giant newsroom.

Tune into the evening news on Madison, Wisconsin's Fox TV affiliate and behold the future of local news. In the program's concluding segment, "The Point," Mark Hyman rants against peace activists ("wack-jobs"), the French ("cheese-eating surrender monkeys"), progressives ("loony left") and the so-called liberal media, usually referred to as the "hate-America crowd" or the "Axis of Drivel." Colorful, if creatively anemic, this is TV's version of talk radio, with the precisely tanned Hyman playing a second-string Limbaugh.

posted November 11, 2004 11:27 AM            

How about this? The President probably shares that sentiment about the French.

posted November 11, 2004 12:01 PM              

Well that should keep him busy for this week. I'll get back to you on the rest.

Hey,thanks Santa.

posted November 11, 2004 01:34 PM            

Bush is going to drill ANWR TINK. Hey, that's were the oil is.

Fearfully kissing Israeli butt? Fearfully? Hopefully, a leader will consolidate the Palestinians, someone open to reason who will stop Hamas and the other terrorist groups from attacking Israel. There isn't going to be peace there until those attacks stop and someone is really in charge of the Palestinian areas. Arafat really wasn't.

Well, if the next nutbar Attorney General is as successful in disrupting terrorists organizations here, having them arrested, deported or jailed, seizing their funds and prosecuting corporate offenders as Ashcroft was, you won't have too much to complain about....will you?

Are you sure you want people in the Federal Government who really understand the Constitution....and act on it? If that ever happens....again, lots of things will go bye-bye.