French again assume EU lead

THE French Foreign Minister, Mr Herve de Charette, yesterday made an appeal for an immediate international conference to stop the fighting between ethnic Tutsis and Hutus in eastern Zaire. He implied military intervention should be used to allow the passage of humanitarian aid.

Yet again - only 10 days after President Jacques Chirac's controversial tour of the Middle East - France is attempting to lead European policy in an international crisis.

"Tragedy has thrown on to the roads more than a million people in conditions so awful that humanitarian aid cannot be taken to them," Mr de Charette said. "This tragedy demands an immediate reaction from the international community."

He invited the Organisation of African Unity, Europe, the US and Canada to meet "without delay" to agree on the appropriate means to secure the Kivu region. "This security would enable the refugees to go back to the camps they have left and displaced populations to return to their villages," he said.

A Foreign Ministry source told The Irish Times that no time or venue had yet been suggested for the meeting. The French proposed conference would be "complementary" to the African conference to be held in Nairobi today, he said.

Mr de Charette said France felt it was necessary to secure the entire zone to allow humanitarian aid shipments to resume. Only a substantial military operation could accomplish this. The allusion to "the entire zone" seemed more ambitious than proposals for humanitarian "corridors", being discussed in European circles.

But Zaire has so far refused to allow foreign troops to operate on its territory and the absence of the Zairean President, who has been undergoing cancer treatment in Geneva, has made it difficult to co ordinate with Zairean authorities. The Rwandan government, which is deliberately driving the refugees from camps near its border, is unlikely to accept a solution which would reverse their exodus.

"We are going towards an intervention by the international community to secure eastern Zaire," said a Foreign Ministry spokesman. "The form [of the intervention] will become clear in the next few days. France does not envisage unilateral intervention. Le Monde has suggested that French, Belgian and South African troops could be involved.

France will present its proposals for humanitarian aid at a European ministers meeting in Brussels on Thursday, Mr de Charette said. The French Foreign Minister has discussed the Zairean crisis by telephone with the Tanaiste, Mr Spring, and with Mr Jacques Santer, the President of the European Commission.

France's honorary consul in the town of Goma, Mr Patrick Lumes, said that, if nothing was done within 48 hours, "there will be no point in humanitarian organisations bothering".