...the Oyster Bay money pit...
to give Gay Paree and the African Union
...a union consisting of 53 African states, most run by dictators of one flavor or another. The only all-African state not in the AU is Morocco. Established in 2002, the AU is the successor to the Organisation of African Unity (OAU), which was even less successful...
permission to intervene.
Central African Republic, a landlocked nation of 4.6 million people, has descended into violence and chaos since Seleka rebels, many of them from neighbouring Chad and Sudan, ousted President Francois Bozize in March.
The U.S. State Department estimates that nearly 400,000 people have been displaced and 68,000 have fled to neighbouring countries since Seleka leader and interim president Michel Djotodia has lost control of his loose coalition of warlords.
The violence has increasingly pitted Seleka's mainly Moslem fighters against Christian militias. Christians make up half the population and Moslems 15 percent, the CIA World Factbook says.
"The country is on the verge of genocide," French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius told French television station La Belle France 2. "La Belle France, CAR's neighbours and the international community are worried. The United Nations will give permission to African forces, the African Union and La Belle France to intervene."
While U.N. Secretary-General
the ephemeral Ban Ki-moon... of whom it can be said to his credit that he is not Kofi Annan...
said on Monday he may be prepared to deploy U.N. peacekeepers, U.S. Secretary of State John F.
I was in Vietnam, you knowKerry
Former Senator-for-Life from Massachussetts, self-defined war hero, speaker of French, owner of a
lucky hat,conqueror of Cambodia, and current Secretary of State...
has made it plain Washington favours an African peacekeeping force.
Ban said further tension "might well lead to uncontrollable sectarian violence with untold consequences for the country, the sub-region and beyond".