The deteriorating situation in the Democratic Republic of Congo, enough to break the heart of the most determined peace broker, could see France pulled even deeper into policing the continent.
At the turn of the century France had resolutely turned its back on direct action on the troubled continent.
The days of sending in the Foreign Legion were over, declared then foreign minister Hubert Vedrine. France would remain the pre-eminent Western power on the continent, but Africa would have to put out its own fires.
Côte d’Ivoire put paid to that. France could not see this regional powerhouse disintegrate and sent in forces after the rebellion last year. They are still there, together with troops from the Economic Community of West African States, policing a ceasefire and two-year transition to elections.
Now France has put up its hand to help stabilise Ituri, in the province of Bunia, where ethnic fighting between Hema and Lendu threatens the hard-won Congo peace deal packaged by South Africa little more than a month ago.
France’s offer is highly conditional. It will send a rapid reaction force into Congo as part of an international force and with a very specific United Nations mandate.
Already UN officials have upped the ante by urging other countries to follow the French example.
”We are in touch with other governments to see if they will join France in such an effort,” Secretary General Kofi Annan said this week.
Western intervention is undoubtedly irksome to Africans who have seen Congo as the prime example of Africa — or at least the Third World — tending to its own problems.
However, the 700 Uruguayan troops in the embattled Ituri capital of Bunia in the east of Congo are patently unable to contain the situation.
Only 100 of the 600 policemen sent to Bunia by the Kinshasa government when Uganda troops pulled out last month are still there. The rest have fled.
Carla del Ponte, the UN chief war crimes prosecutor, has warned that the killing in Ituri borders on genocide. The UN will eventually put 8 700 peacekeepers into Congo, including 1 200 South Africans and 2 000 from Bangladesh.
With just more than half the contingent already there, experts are saying the numbers are woefully inadequate.
In Pretoria this week British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw promised ”practical and political” assistance to Congo.
Pressed on this, however, he said there were no plans to send British troops. Britain helped to train the South Africans going to Congo and used troops to bring order to Sierra Leone.
Straw said he and his French counterpart, Dominique de Villepin, intended visiting Congo and other countries in the Great Lakes region shortly.