Word: faso
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Chirac immediately rushed to the scene when he learned of the shooting. Ringed by scores of club-wielding police, the Premier expressed shock at "this bestial assassination." President Mitterrand, who was visiting the West African state of Burkina Faso, said France had "lost a No. 1" in the death of Besse, and he declared that "all our forces must unite against terrorism, without flinching and without compromise...
...French troops to the landlocked African country. Libya and France signed an agreement in 1984 to withdraw each nation's forces. France did so, but Gaddafi promptly embarrassed Mitterrand by reneging. Libya fought a minor border war with Egypt in 1977 and supplied materiel to coup leaders in Burkina Faso in 1983. Gaddafi is suspected of having mined the Red Sea in 1984 (18 ships were damaged), and continues to use Libyan diplomatic pouches to export weapons. Says the State Department's Oakley: "Terrorism is one of the primary instruments of Gaddafi's foreign policy...
...Burkina Faso's Sankara has also inherited a country in economic torpor, and one that because of a chronic drought has actually become poorer since he took over in a coup in August 1983. Sankara has cut civil servants' wages and raised taxes. One problem is that his regime's inflammatory rhetoric keeps bubbling to the surface, making some countries hesitant to offer economic aid. Last month, for example, a government-run newspaper compared President Reagan to Hitler, prompting the U.S. to cut back its commitment to two development projects in forestry and agriculture. France, which in 1984 contributed...
...country's judicial system by introducing what he calls "people's courts." Says a Western diplomat in Ouagadougou: "He means it when he says he is for social justice for all." Sankara believes his goal of "two meals a day and safe drinking water" for all of Burkina Faso's people can be achieved. The main hope for economic development lies in the exploitation of natural resources, which include gold, copper and diamonds. One instance of Sankara's example-setting parsimony: when the electrical system at the presidential residence needed repairing, he paid for the work by selling the contents...
Inevitably, Rawlings and Sankara have acquired enemies. At the end of last year, Sankara antagonized Burkina Faso's landlords, many of whom are military officers, when he decided to aid the poor by decreeing a yearlong moratorium on the payment of rent. Rawlings has also been criticized, particularly by expatriate Ghanaians who have demanded free elections and a return to , civilian government. Nonetheless, Frances Ademola, who owns an art gallery in Accra, speaks for most middle-class Ghanaians when she says, "We have learned to love Jerry Rawlings. What we fear most is that he will be assassinated...