Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade announced his country was taking back military bases held by former colonial power France at midnight as the country marked 50 years of independence yesterday.
“I solemnly declare that from 00H00 [midnight] April 4 Senegal will take back all the [military] bases formerly held by France and intends to exert its sovereignty,” Wade said in an address to the nation on public TV.
“Regarding the time frame for the release of these bases, I have asked the prime minister and army chief of staff to begin talks with the French side,” he said.
PHOTO: EPA
Wade was speaking on Saturday on the eve of celebrations to mark the 50th anniversary of Senegal’s independence from France, on April 4, 1960.
As Wade spoke, French Interior Minister Brice Hortefeux was arriving to represent France at yesterday’s ceremonies, which were to include a military parade in which French soldiers were to take part.
“This year will be different from the others,” Wade said at the start of his speech.
Following independence, Senegal had agreed to let its former colonial masters France keep military bases there, he said.
“Over the years, this situation has appeared more and more incongruous and has often been felt by our populations, particularly young people, civil servants and the army, as an incomplete independence,” he said.
In Paris, a French defense ministry spokesman said talks between the two countries were ongoing on future cooperation and the maintenance of a smaller French force on Senegalese territory.
On Friday, French President Nicolas Sarkozy raised the question of their military presence in Senegal in a message to Wade, in which he said France wanted to maintain political and military cooperation.
He is not attending the ceremonies in Senegal marking the 50th anniversary of independence.
France and its former colony Senegal have been bound by a defense agreement since 1974, and 1,200 French soldiers are currently “prepositioned” in Dakar at one of three permanent French bases in Africa.
On Feb. 19 Wade’s spokesman Mamadou Bamba Ndiaye said “the French military bases will leave Dakar in virtue of an agreement signed by both parties” ahead of the independence celebrations.
The French defense minister confirmed the same day that Paris intended to close its military bases in Senegal but intended to preserve a “center of military cooperation with a regional purpose.”
At the end of February Sarkozy announced that only 300 soldiers, 900 fewer than there are today, would stay in Dakar.
With much pomp and circumstance, Cairo is today to inaugurate the long-awaited Grand Egyptian Museum (GEM), widely presented as the crowning jewel on authorities’ efforts to overhaul the country’s vital tourism industry. With a panoramic view of the Giza pyramids plateau, the museum houses thousands of artifacts spanning more than 5,000 years of Egyptian antiquity at a whopping cost of more than US$1 billion. More than two decades in the making, the ultra-modern museum anticipates 5 million visitors annually, with never-before-seen relics on display. In the run-up to the grand opening, Egyptian media and official statements have hailed the “historic moment,” describing the
‘CHILD PORNOGRAPHY’: The doll on Shein’s Web site measure about 80cm in height, and it was holding a teddy bear in a photo published by a daily newspaper France’s anti-fraud unit on Saturday said it had reported Asian e-commerce giant Shein (希音) for selling what it described as “sex dolls with a childlike appearance.” The French Directorate General for Competition, Consumer Affairs and Fraud Control (DGCCRF) said in a statement that the “description and categorization” of the items on Shein’s Web site “make it difficult to doubt the child pornography nature of the content.” Shortly after the statement, Shein announced that the dolls in question had been withdrawn from its platform and that it had launched an internal inquiry. On its Web site, Le Parisien daily published a
China’s Shenzhou-20 crewed spacecraft has delayed its return mission to Earth after the vessel was possibly hit by tiny bits of space debris, the country’s human spaceflight agency said yesterday, an unusual situation that could disrupt the operation of the country’s space station Tiangong. An impact analysis and risk assessment are underway, the China Manned Space Agency (CMSA) said in a statement, without providing a new schedule for the return mission, which was originally set to land in northern China yesterday. The delay highlights the danger to space travel posed by increasing amounts of debris, such as discarded launch vehicles or vessel
RUBBER STAMP? The latest legislative session was the most productive in the number of bills passed, but critics attributed it to a lack of dissenting voices On their last day at work, Hong Kong’s lawmakers — the first batch chosen under Beijing’s mantra of “patriots administering Hong Kong” — posed for group pictures, celebrating a job well done after four years of opposition-free politics. However, despite their smiles, about one-third of the Legislative Council will not seek another term in next month’s election, with the self-described non-establishment figure Tik Chi-yuen (狄志遠) being among those bowing out. “It used to be that [the legislature] had the benefit of free expression... Now it is more uniform. There are multiple voices, but they are not diverse enough,” Tik said, comparing it
RSS