Word: chadness
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Thus the announcement last week that Libya would "merge" with its southern neighbor Chad would have been laughable were it not for one formidable difference: a Libyan military occupation already in effect. Since early December Gaddafi has had some 5,000 members of his "Islamic Legions" inside Chad. Backed by artillery, tanks and air cover, the Libyan troops had broken the stalemate in the country's nine-month-old civil war by helping President Goukouni Oueddei to defeat his rival. Defense Minister Hissene Habre. The proposed Libya-Chad merger thus appeared less a union between consenting sovereign nations than...
...nations who fear that they could be the next gleam in the Libyan leader's eye was swift. Said Gabon President Omar Bongo: "This annexation attempt creates a very serious situation." Egypt's Anwar Sadat and the Sudan's Gafaar Nimeiri expressed comparable concern. Within the Chad capital of N'Djamena, where months of internecine combat have left the city ravaged, there was incredulity. Said Abdelkader Kamougue, Vice President of Chad's transitional government legitimized by the 1979 Lagos agreement: "It's an impossible marriage...
Perhaps no country was more sur prised and upset by the Libya-Chad agreement than France, Chad's former colonial ruler and self-proclaimed postcolonial "protector." Until last May, France regularly backed Chad with financial and military aid, and it privately supported Habre's losing side in the civil war. Thus the mood in Paris now was one of embarrassment as well as consternation. As it happened, the announced merger came only a day after Libyan officials revealed that they had signed a long-term contract with Elf Aquitaine, France's state-con trolled oil company...
...French government, taken by surprise, weakly insisted that it had not intervened militarily to counter Gaddafi's invasion of Chad because neither of the two cornerstones of French African policy had been violated. No French nationals were in jeopardy or in need of rescue, and no plea for French military help had come from a legitimate government. "We are just spectators," said a French spokesman. More pointedly, the Paris daily Le Monde called the invasion "a serious defeat for Paris," adding that "the French government was visibly caught on the wrong foot...
...Chad's African neighbors were even less sanguine about Gaddafi's invasion. Said Senegal's daily Le Soleil, summing up a common view: "All Africa should be concerned. Chad could be the first link in a United States of the Sahel sought by Libya...