Charlemagne: Diplomatic baggage

摘要

SEVERAL MIRAGE 2000 fighter jets took, off from an air base in N'Djamena, Chad's capital, on February 3rd and flew north over the savannah and the scrubby Sahel towards the Sahara Desert. There the French planes bombed a column of some 50 lorries carrying rebels south from the Libyan border. Paris's action was co-ordinated not with the rest of the eu, but with Chad's brutal government and Khalifa Haftar, the Libyan warlord who controls swathes of his country. Today France is still backing General Haftar as he shells the post-Qaddafi "government of national accord" in Tripoli. On April 10th Paris blocked an eu statement urging him to stop, infuriating its European allies.