French bolster defences at Chad capital’s airport

Press, 19 February 1986, Page 10

French bolster defences at Chad capital’s airport

NZPA-Reuter Paris Four French combat aircraft have arrived in the Chadian capital of N’djamena as the advance guard of a deterrent force after a bombing raid on the international airport there, for which France blames Libya. But the Libyans say that the raiding Tupolev-22, which damaged the runway, belonged to rebels fighting the Chad Government of Hissene Habre. The French Defence Minister, Mr Paul Quiles, told a radio interviewer the damage was being quickly repaired and that French combat planes had landed during the afternoon.

Defence sources said two Jaguar strike aircraft and two Mirage fighters had flown in from Bangui, in the neighbouring Central African Republic, the base from which French planes bombed the Li-byan-held Oudi Bourn airstrip in northern Chad on Sunday.

French Air Force commandos were completing work on anti-aircraft defences round N’djamena airport, including Crotale short-range ground-to-air missiles mounted on light armoured vehicles. Mr Quiles said France was responding to a request from Chad for protection and did not intend to retaliate. It was sending in a deterrent force to ward off any more Libyan attacks, he said. He declined to spell out how many troops would be sent to Chad or where they would be deployed. He rules out any repetition of “Operation Manta,” in 1983-84, in which France sent in 3000 men to hold a fixed eastwest defensive line across the country. He said the attack on N’djamena airport had been “a blind raid” by a lone plane, which dropped its bombs from more than 16,000 feet, far too high for any accuracy. “This means there

could have been civilian casualties and more serious damage,” he said.

The Tupolev-22, a twinengine, swept-wing jet that was the first Soviet supersonic bomber when unveiled 25 years ago, stayed beyond the maximum range of Crotale missiles.

Mr Quiles said the runway had been hit offcentre by one bomb.

Mr Habre’s forces had driven the Libyans and their allies, the forces of the rebel leader, Goukouni Oueddei, back beyond the sixteenth parallel, the unofficial borderline between Govern-ment-held and rebel-held territory.

A succession of French governments have found themselves obliged to intervene in the civil war in the country for most of the last 20 years.