Desert Standoff

Mitterrand answers his critics

Coming in low from the south across the sluggish Chari River, four Mirage fighters peeled off and soared upward to gain height for their final approach to the airport at N'Djamena, the Chadian capital. A few minutes later four Jaguar fighter-bombers repeated the maneuver. By the end of the day the little airport, which normally handles only a dozen civilian airliners a week, had begun to look like a military airbase. Parked next to the jets on the runway apron were half a dozen Transall military freighters and a C-135F aerial refueling plane, together with five fighter aircraft from Zaire. "Operation Manta," as the government of President Francis Mitterrand had code-named France's challenge to Libyan Leader Muammar Gaddafi's ambitions in Chad, was beginning to acquire some sting.

With his aircraft and some 3,000 troops in place in Chad and in the neighboring Central African Republic, Mitterrand was able to launch a two-pronged diplomatic offensive. He dispatched key aides to a number of capitals to see if Gaddafi would consider a negotiated solution. Equally important, he took the initiative to silence his critics at home. In his first formal statement on France's involvement in Chad, he told the newspaper Le Monde that French troops were in Chad only as "instructors" who would provide "logistical support" and exercise a "dissuasive role." Mitterrand added that if threatened, French troops would "respond and, to defend themselves better, not limit their reply to a defensive one." Implicit was a warning that a Libyan push south from the oasis of Faya-Largeau, which was captured by a joint Libyan and rebel force in early August, would produce a military showdown with France.

The French buildup was applauded by the government of Chadian President Hissene Habre, who had been imploring France to intervene directly. But there seemed little likelihood of imminent conflict between the French and Libyan forces. With some 300 miles of desert separating the Libyans at Faya-Largeau from the French forces at the forward redoubts of Sallal and Arada, it would be a bold venture for either side to make a military move. The Libyans are known to have ground-to-air missiles at Faya-Largeau. The French have conventional antiaircraft missiles, while Chadian troops in the forward positions have been issued some of the 30 Redeye missiles supplied to Chad by the Reagan Administration as part of a $25 million emergency-aid package.

Nonetheless, it was doubtful that Gaddafi, who had committed as many as 3,500 troops to the attempt to replace Habre with ex-President Goukouni Oueddei, would back off completely in the face of the French military buildup. Aware of the French reluctance to launch an assault, Gaddafi seemed to be hoping that he could secure through negotiations at least part of what he had sought to achieve through force of arms, namely the annexation of a chunk of northern Chad.

With the arrival of French airpower in N'Djamena, the U.S. announced that it was withdrawing the two AW ACS surveillance planes that it had sent to the area a month ago in the hope that Mitterrand would intervene directly. The Administration feared that if Chad fell to Gaddafi, the Libyan leader would be in a position to threaten such U.S. allies as Egypt and, especially, the Sudan. The AW ACS planes never took part in the Chadian war, but they became an unfortunate symbol of the differences between Paris and Washington over how to deal with the crisis.

In his interview, Mitterrand tried to put to rest the U.S.-French dispute that had flared over the question of Chad. "Let's sum things up by saying that we have not ignored the Americans, and they have concerned themselves considerably with us," he said. "We have met, we have talked. Mr. Reagan has written me, I have responded to him. It's all a question of measure. I think things are now back in order." Perhaps they were in Paris and Washington, but in Chad things were still very much in disorder. sb This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.