schema:articleBody
| - French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian on Tuesday called on France and African countries to "stand together" in the face of what he described as greed and jockeying among major powers. Speaking in Brazzaville, the capital of the Republic of Congo, at an event to mark a 1940 rallying cry by General Charles de Gaulle, Le Drian said the world is "marked by brutality, by attempts at predation, by rivalry between powers." "We have to stand together," he said. He referred to the October 27, 1940 "Brazzaville Manifesto" in which de Gaulle, in the capital of what was then the French Congo, called for all free forces in France's African colonies to rally behind him after the country had surrendered to the Nazis. At the time, the manifesto "enabled us to recover control over our respective destinies and... today enables us, if we wish, to decide, while accepting the complexity of this legacy, to give ourselves a joint destiny once more," Le Drian said. Le Drian's remarks, while not naming countries, aimed at concern in Africa about economic dependence or over-exploitation of resources by Russia, China and others. He spoke at a seminar also attended by the presidents of Congo, the Central African Republic and Chad, which are former French colonies, and the Democratic Republic of Congo, which was a Belgian colony. Chadian President Idriss Deby, a close French ally, backed Le Drian's call but also urged countries to "do more and do better" to fight jihadism in the Sahel and roll back poverty. vl/mbb/thm/ri/lc
|