Word: french
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...French President Nicolas Sarkozy said he could not "close the door" to the possibility that he might skip part of the Beijing Olympics. Hollywood figures Steven Spielberg, Richard Gere and Mia Farrow have invoked the idea of a boycott for reasons ranging from Tibet to Darfur. Meanwhile, protesters are disrupting the winding path of the Olympic torch from Greece to the opening ceremonies...
...finally out in the open: French President Nicolas Sarkozy plans to send significant troop reinforcements to the NATO mission in Afghanistan. But while his long-anticipated decision to bolster the alliance's struggling counterinsurgency mission will please the U.S., Britain and Canada, which had been urging their NATO partners to do more, Sarkozy's announcement has prompted an unexpected uproar in France. Indeed, some commentators are warning that by expanding France's exposure in a war considered just by a majority of French people, Sarkozy may be undermining public support of the mission...
...French will back troop deployment to combat zones and will tolerate significant death counts as an occupational military hazard," notes political commentator Gilles Delafon. "What they won't tolerate are soldiers being sent to their deaths because officials didn't have a real strategy or plan for how to win the conflict. And that looks to be the case with this new deployment to Afghanistan...
...stepped Sarkozy, who in London this week explained his decision by warning, "We can not accept a return of the Taliban and al-Qaeda to Kabul. Defeat is not an option to us, even if victory is difficult." Few in French politics or public opinion disagree with that view. "Afghanistan is still linked in the French mind to the response to 9/11 ... (and) is still widely seen here as the right war" says François Heisbourg, a military expert and special adviser to the International Institute for Strategic Studies in Paris...
...That may change, however. Heisbourg notes that since the late 1970s, positive French public opinion of the nation's military has reinforced wide - and extremely rare - political consensus on the funding and use of French forces. It is that sweeping support that has left France's troops better-funded and more frequently dispatched to international crises or conflicts than other European forces, which have generally shrunk for lack of financial and political backing. But sending new French troops into an increasingly chaotic Afghanistan without a clear victory plan could eventually create the kinds of doubts in public opinion, observers warn...