That nuanced French foreign policy

Europeans are so much more civilised than the trigger-happy cowboys across the pond.

After an unprovoked attack, a civilised country should reflect on what it might have done to engender such hatred. In any eventuality, they should only take military action after prolonged negotiations have failed. Say a dozen years or more in the case of Iraq.

"On Saturday, nine French soldiers were killed and 22 wounded when Ivorian jets bombed a French base in Bouake. A French military spokesman denied suggestions that the attack - which also killed an American civilian - was an accident.

On the orders of President Jacques Chirac, two Russian-made Sukhoi 25 fighter-bombers and five combat helicopters - most of the Ivorian air force - were destroyed. Paris also sent another 600 troops to Abidjan."



It is only a measured, diplomatic response that can succeed. Anything else will provoke anti-Western hatred, the righteous anger of the dispossessed.

"One reporter watched yesterday as a crowd armed with machetes and iron bars entered a neighbourhood near the city’s main French military base, demanding to know if there were any French living there. "It’s better to kill the whites than steal their stuff," one rioter shouted.

"It’s better to burn them, like in Algeria. They burned the whites - that’s why they’re respected," another said. "



Military action should be proportionate. Every effort must be made to avoid civilian casualties.

"MUCH more" than 500 people have been wounded in clashes in Ivory Coast's largest city, and loyalist mobs are blocking efforts to tend to the injured, a Red Cross official said today.

"God knows" how many other people have been killed, Red Cross official Kim Gordon-Bates said.

On Saturday, Mr Gordon-Bates had reported 150 people injured, most from bullets. He said the toll had climbed to "over 500 wounded - much more than that" today.



An attempt at regime change would be contrary to international law.

About 50 armoured vehicles had taken up positions around Gbagbo's house in the West African country's commercial capital, Abidjan, on Monday, a presidential spokesman claimed.

"Their presence here is scaring people, they're crying and they think that President Gbagbo is going to be overthrown," spokesman Desire Tagro said.



Departure from civilised diplomacy could risk a quagmire - or worse.

Parliamentary speaker Mamadou Coulibaly called on government supporters to prepare for war. "Today’s [Sunday’s] events mark a point of change," he said. "Vietnam will be as nothing compared with what we are going to do here." President Gbagbo’s party, the Ivorian Popular Front, demanded "the immediate departure of all French troops from the Ivory Coast".