France’s new Minister of the Armed Forces, Sebastien Lecornu, announced on Saturday in Abidjan the definition of a “security agenda” to face terrorism in Africa, particularly in the Sahel-Saharan strip.
Sebastien Lecornu was speaking after a working session with the Minister of State, Minister of Defense of Cote d’Ivoire, Tene Birahima Ouattara, at his office in Plateau, the business center of Abidjan.
He then met with President Alassane Ouattara.
Mr. Lecornu said he discussed “the fight against terrorism, what the French forces have accomplished with the Serval and Barkhane forces in Mali and throughout the region, (which) is obviously key to providing important (security) responses.”
“We are now entering a new agenda that we will have to work on. This agenda, we will co-construct it with the main friendly countries (…) in this area,” Sebastien Lecornu added.
This agenda will “be deployed in terms of reflection on intelligence, interoperability on our armed forces, on the role of French units when they are positioned in a country like Cote d’Ivoire, which is a bit of a showcase for what we want to develop.”
“This is an agenda that, then, will allow us with the President of the Republic, Emmanuel Macron, also to have a more European position (singularly with the counterparts of the Mediterranean, Greek, Italian, Spanish),” he insisted.
The French Minister noted that the agenda should be known “for the fall and the end of the year, but it is a semester of work that opens”.
He said he had already had a working session with Mr. Birahima on the sidelines of the Eurosatory arms fair in Paris.
“I made a commitment with the minister that during my first tour in Africa, as the new Minister of the Armed Forces to come to Cote d’Ivoire … in view of the maturity of our cooperation in defense,” he went on.
This security agenda in Africa will focus in particular on “the Sahel-Sahelian strip in a global way (…) all around Mali,” said Mr. Sebastien Lecornu.
According to Mr. Lecornu, there is “more and more, a kind of myopia in Europe and in France, where the war in Ukraine gets all the concentrations, intentions and energies. But, for all that, we must not forget the current security and also development in Africa.”
For his part, the Minister of State, Minister of Defense of Cote d’Ivoire, Tene Birahima Ouattara, mentioned having spoken with his counterpart about issues related to terrorism, drug trafficking, maritime piracy and the modus operandi to curb these scourges in the sub-region.
France being a long-standing partner in security cooperation, Mr. Tene Birahima Ouattara welcomed the fact that it is “increasingly deploying significant resources to help Cote d’Ivoire deal with these scourges that undermine the sub-region.”
French Forces in Cote d’Ivoire (FFCI) are stationed in Port-Bouet, a seaside town in the south of Abidjan.
Before his meeting with his Ivorian counterpart, Mr. Sebastien Lecornu visited the camp of French soldiers who have been in the country for decades.
AP/ls/cgd/fss/as/APA