France demands list of Israeli firms selling arms to Ivory Coast

[Scurrilous]

http://www.haaretzdaily.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=539082&contrassID=1&subContrassID=1&sbSubContrassID=0&listSrc=Y

<snip>

"The French government has demanded that Israel provide information on companies selling arms to the Ivory Coast, where a civil war is now raging. The demand, which indirectly places responsibility on Israeli companies for the death of French soldiers on a peace-keeping mission, was apparently raised by the French Embassy's military attache or a representative of its intelligence agencies in talks with Defense Ministry officials."

<snip>

"About three months ago, as reported in Haaretz, the French government asked the Foreign and Defense ministries to stop exporting weapons from Israel to the Ivory Coast. Defense Ministry director general Amos Yaron subsequently ordered a freeze on the supply of weapons to the Ivory Coast by Israeli companies.

According to the Haaretz report, among the Israeli companies involved in weapons sales to the Ivory Coast were Aeronautics Defense Systems, which sold drones and sent personnel to maintain them. Arms dealer Moshe Rothschild sold aircraft, parts and ammunition purchased in Eastern Europe; and businessman Hezi Betzalel sold surveillance systems manufactured by the Israeli company, Verint Systems.

The French say the soldiers where killed when drones and surveillance systems assisted the Ivory Coast air force in attacking a base where they were stationed. The Ivory Coast government said the attack had been directed at rebel forces. In a reprisal, however, the French air force destroyed the Ivory Coast aircraft, hit the drones and destroyed the intelligence center operated by the Israeli systems."

[GetTheRightVote]

1. I hope the french get their answers, Isreal is not all it pretends to be

:kick:

[Zebulon]

2. The French aren't all they pretend to be either. eom

[xchrom]

3. israel is just as accountable for it's wrong doings

as any other.
playing ''i know you are -- but what am i'' shows how childish things have become when it comes to critisizing israel.

israel's history is no more glorious or sacrosanct than any others.
it's full of the same brutality and corruption as any others in history.

[DistantWind88]

4. Is it illegal to sell arms to the Ivory Coast?

Is there a UN prohibition on doing so? I'm not up to speed on that.

[NNN0LHI]

5. Yes

http://ndtv.com/morenews/showmorestory.asp?id=67800

UN to monitor Ivory Coast arms embargo

[DistantWind88]

6. Thanks for the link!

[Zebulon]

7. You will note

that I didn't try to defend Israel's actions. For the French to be complaining about another country profiting from the arms trade, though, is the height of irony.

http://64.233.161.104/search?q=cache:5hoKp0-Nc24J:users.skynet.be/wihogora/McNully.pdf+french+arms+trade+rwanda&hl=en

Abstract. France is now the world’s second largest arms exporter, and the largest supplier of weapons to the developing world. The record of France’s involvement in Rwanda from 1990 to 1994 has motivated the NGO lobby within France to subject French government policy – towards the developing world in general, and on arms supplies in particular – to unprecedented scrutiny. Accordingly, the level and volume of criticism of French involvement in Rwanda resulted in the first ever parliamentary commission to scrutinise French military activity overseas, although this and other official inquiries stopped short of identifying arms supplies as instrumental in exacerbating the Rwandan crisis. A consideration of French arms supplies to Rwanda can offer a template by which to measure the nature and degree of France’s support for the Habyarimana regime which planned, and the Sindikubwabo interim government which oversaw, the 1994 genocide in that country. Moreover, French arms supplies after France’s own and the UN’s arms embargo demonstrate how a process of unchecked militarisation may involve the supplier as well as the supplied in illegality.