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Copyright 1996 The New York Times Company  
The New York Times

May 22, 1996, Wednesday, Late Edition - Final

SECTION: Section A;  Page 3;  Column 1;  Foreign Desk 

LENGTH: 1278 words

HEADLINE: France's Army Keeps Grip in African Ex-Colonies

BYLINE:  By HOWARD W. FRENCH 

DATELINE: LIBREVILLE, Gabon

BODY:
Week in and week out for years, French sentries have manned the lookout towers at a military base here, and French soldiers have drilled behind high concrete walls topped with barbed wire.

Despite such vigilance, France's military outpost here, 3,300 miles from Paris, is not guarding some hostile border or protecting against a foreign threat.

Instead, to judge from the base's setting, hard against one of Africa's most extravagant presidential mansions, among Paris's top priorities here is protecting Gabon's autocratic leader, Omar Bongo, who was installed with French help in 1968.

With the end of the cold war, France has begun the difficult process of wrestling with the future size and shape of its large standing army. Earlier this year President Jacques Chirac announced sweeping reforms that would alter longstanding French deployments in Europe and gradually introduce an all-volunteer force.

Left unchanged, at least for now, however, are African commitments like these that date to independence 36 years ago. Besides Gabon, French troops are based in the Ivory Coast, Cameroon, Senegal, Central African Republic, Chad, Djibouti and the Indian Ocean islands of Reunion and Mayotte.

In addition to the countries where it has troops, France has military cooperation agreements with Mauritania, Mali, Burkina Faso, Benin, Togo, Equatorial Guinea, Congo, Zaire, Rwanda and Burundi.

Since its 1964 intervention in Gabon, France has intervened militarily on the continent every other year on average. Paris has repeatedly sent troops into action in Chad, flown in paratroopers to rescue French and Belgian nationals in Zaire and help put down an insurrection there, and used its forces to replace political leaders in the Central African Republic.

[France said May 21 that it was trying to arrange a settlement to an army uprising in the Central African Republic, Reuters reported. French troops had been patrolling the capital, Bangui, at the Government's request, but most of the troops retreated to their bases, witnesses said, as fighting and looting continued.

[A French military plane flew out with 138 French nationals, and an American military plane was used to evacuate 13 Americans as American marines arrived to help. French troops were flown from Gabon and Chad to reinforce those already in the Central African Republic.]

In response to worried appeals by clients across the continent over rumors of an impending cutback of French troops, Mr. Chirac's Government pledged that Paris's military presence in Africa, totaling some 8,700 soldiers, would not be reduced.

If the announcement soothed Paris's main political allies , however, it has also stirred a public debate in Africa's increasingly free press and among opposition parties about France's mission on the continent.

Late last year, France's Minister for Foreign Assistance, Jacques Godfrain, explained the sense of his country's continuing military presence in Africa in terms of stabilizing democracies. Paris "will intervene each time an elected democratic power is overthrown by a coup d'etat if a military cooperation agreement exists," he said.

Given that France had never done such a thing and that most of its African-based troops are billeted in countries of dubious democratic credentials, Mr. Godfrain's remarks unleashed a storm of skeptical commentary throughout West and Central Africa.

The skepticism turned to derision when Niger's first democratically elected Government fell to a military coup in February. At the time, France, which has a defense treaty with Niger, said it regretted the development but would not intervene.

"What justifies this kind of presence?" asked an editorialist in the Ivory Coast daily Le Jour. "An external threat? Nothing could be less certain." For the Ivorian newspaper, and for commentators throughout this region, France's presence here has more to do with perpetuating Paris's predominance in an area that it has long considered its "natural" zone of influence.

"Only the African continent gives France the illusion of being a great power," another Ivorian editorialist wrote, under the headline "France Comes to the Rescue of Dictators," in response to Mr. Godfrain's remarks.

Some countries where French troops are stationed, like the Ivory Coast and Gabon, represent rich markets for France or, like Niger and Chad, are current or potentially important sources of strategic resources such as uranium and oil.

For many experts on African affairs, the history of France's military role in post-colonial Africa can be neatly condensed in the experience of Gabon, where Paris launched the first of many full-fledged interventions in 1964.

When Gabon's first President, Leon M'ba, was overthrown in a broadly popular military coup in 1964, French paratroopers were flown in to reinstate Mr. M'ba, whose devotion to France was legendary.

Mr. M'ba was soon weakened by illness, and by France's promotion of a young aide, Omar Bongo, to near figurehead status. Jacques Foccart, the chief adviser on Africa to the French President at the time, Charles de Gaulle, wrote in his memoirs that Paris literally auditioned Mr. Bongo for the role of head of state, which he assumed in 1968 upon Mr. M'ba's death.

Shortly after taking office, Mr. Bongo banned opposition parties in Gabon, and ruled unchallenged until a democratic reform movement began sweeping much of Africa in 1990. With his huge mansions throughout Gabon and around the world, diplomats say Mr. Bongo has used the country's large oil revenues to become one of the continent's wealthiest leaders.

Diplomats say corporations and businessmen from France, which retains an unusually high degree of influence here, even by the standards of its former colonies, have also done well by Gabon's oil-based economy.

To protect that investment, from their bases in Gabon, the 600 or so French troops here have intervened twice, in 1990 and 1994, to help put down civil disturbances directed against Mr. Bongo's rule.

A second wave of riots occurred after Mr. Bongo declared himself the winner of an election that international observers called "a very flawed exercise," with 51 percent of the vote.

These days, Mr. Bongo, who is also protected by Moroccan security units and privately hired former French military officers, never goes anywhere without first closing off nearby streets to traffic.

"There is no threat to Gabon other than the disaffection of the population towards its leader," said one Gabonese businessman who is sympathetic to the opposition. "When someone needs this kind of protection, that should tell you immediately that something is badly wrong."

For diplomats of other Western nations, France's high-profile security role in countries like Gabon has more to do with preserving Paris's privileged access to business opportunities than it does with questions of democracy.

"You could talk about the French presence for hours and hours, but it comes down to two things: prestige and business," said a Western diplomat here. "And they are absolutely determined not to let go of either."

Though more and more Africans have begun to openly criticize France leveraging its military presence and tight network of political ties in Africa to maintain a commercial grip on its foreign colonies, French officials have been frankly unapologetic.

"When we aid a country, we must have a minimum in return," said Bernard Debre, a former minister of foreign assistance, in an interview with the Paris-based magazine Jeune Afrique. "For France, Africa is also a market. Not a captive market, certainly, but not a sieve either."


GRAPHIC: Photo: Three decades after most of its former colonies in Africa became independent, France maintains a significant presence there. French troops paraded with local veterans in Abidjan, Ivory Coast, on Bastille Day last year. (Robert Grossman for the New York Times)
 
Map of Africa showing location of Libreville.

LOAD-DATE: May 22, 1996