To
Strike
Syria, France
Rattles Sword
But Lawless in
Africa,
Franco-Phony
By
Matthew
Russell Lee
UNITED
NATIONS,
August 30 --
In the wake of
the UK Prime
Minister David
Cameron
modifying his
Syria strike
proposal and
still seeing
it voted
down, French
President
Francois
Hollande has
presented his
country as
ready to hit
Syria even
before a
September 4
"emergency
debate."
The
reversal from
the UK and
French legal
positions on
the war in
Iraq
could not be
more stark.
But tellingly
at the UN on
August 29,
right
before the
meeting of the
Permanent Five
members of the
Security
Council on
Syria,
France's
Ambassador
Alexis Lamek
proved himself
unable or
unwilling to
answer a
simple
question about
international
law.
Video
here, from
Minute 3:33.
Inner
City Press
asked Lamek,
repeatedly, if
the UN's
Intervention
Brigade
in Eastern
Congo is a
party to the
armed conflict
there, if
the UN
troops are in
fact
combatants.
Legal
experts have
told Inner
City Press
it is not even
a close
question:
when the UN
uses force
(here, attack
helicopters)
to try to
"neutralize"
armed groups,
the UN is a
combatant,
a party
to an armed
conflict.
Even
the French-drafted
Security
Council press
statement on
the DRC, with
a convoluted
paragraph on
when attacks
are war crimes
and when they
are not,
acknowledges
the issue.
But Lamek
refused to
answer. Has
France under
Hollande not
only reversed
its previous
legal stance,
but become
lawless?
Perhaps
France's
lawlessness in
its former
colonies in
Africa has
leached
out. In intervening
in Mali,
France claimed
vaguely it was
"in
the framework"
of
international
law, then
switched
theories.
Now,
a French
Defense
Department
spokesman
tweets that
France will be
closing 14 of
its embassies
in for
economic
reasons, and
22 satellite
offices and
cultural
centers,
giving as
examples
Sierra Leone,
The
Gambia and Sao
Tome -- that
is, African
countries
which were NOT
French
colonies.
It's a country
turning in on
itself or the
remnants
of its empire,
while Hollande
tries to say
the French
language is on
the rise.
Saying it
doesn't make
it so. Watch
this site.
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