Word: mitterrand
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...airliners a week, had begun to look like a military airbase. Parked next to the jets on the runway apron were half a dozen Transall military freighters and a C-135F aerial refueling plane, together with five fighter aircraft from Zaire. "Operation Manta," as the government of President Francis Mitterrand had code-named France's challenge to Libyan Leader Muammar Gaddafi's ambitions in Chad, was beginning to acquire some sting...
With his aircraft and some 3,000 troops in place in Chad and in the neighboring Central African Republic, Mitterrand was able to launch a two-pronged diplomatic offensive. He dispatched key aides to a number of capitals to see if Gaddafi would consider a negotiated solution. Equally important, he took the initiative to silence his critics at home. In his first formal statement on France's involvement in Chad, he told the newspaper Le Monde that French troops were in Chad only as "instructors" who would provide "logistical support" and exercise a "dissuasive role." Mitterrand added that...
With the arrival of French airpower in N'Djamena, the U.S. announced that it was withdrawing the two AW ACS surveillance planes that it had sent to the area a month ago in the hope that Mitterrand would intervene directly. The Administration feared that if Chad fell to Gaddafi, the Libyan leader would be in a position to threaten such U.S. allies as Egypt and, especially, the Sudan. The AW ACS planes never took part in the Chadian war, but they became an unfortunate symbol of the differences between Paris and Washington over how to deal with the crisis...
...interview, Mitterrand tried to put to rest the U.S.-French dispute that had flared over the question of Chad. "Let's sum things up by saying that we have not ignored the Americans, and they have concerned themselves considerably with us," he said. "We have met, we have talked. Mr. Reagan has written me, I have responded to him. It's all a question of measure. I think things are now back in order." Perhaps they were in Paris and Washington, but in Chad things were still very much in disorder...
...during the August doldrums, when hardly a Parisian can be found on the streets, or that he drafted his letter on stationery from the luxury Hotel Prince de Galles, far from the scene of student riots last spring. Perkins' message that life in France under Socialist President Francois Mitterrand is a "nightmare" only confirmed the worst suspicions of the 300,000 Republican loyalists who received the letter as part of a fund-raising drive for senatorial candidates...