Jacques Chirac

President Jacques Chirac stimulated by a damning report from Amnesty International called ‘Terror in Casamance' discussed Casamance in Paris at the end of February with Diouf and the presidents of Gambia and Guinea-Bissau both of whom offered to mediate...

Those of course include Hayatou's native Cameroon whose President Paul Biya is still close to President Jacques Chirac and can be relied upon to ensure that the Cameroon Football Association Chairman toes the party line...

Buyoya has good friends among the Francophones; he has recently met their doyen President Omar Bongo of Gabon and will be in Paris on 6 March at the invitation of President Jacques Chirac...

President Jacques Chirac was keen to keep Cooperation separate; he is close to several veteran African leaders who saw it as ‘their' ministry...

But few dispute that Rabat remains an important Western ally in North Africa and the Middle East; even if Washington registers disapproval of Hassan's line on Western Sahara the King may always rely on his close relationship with French President Jacques Chirac if it comes to a showdown at the UN Security Council...

President Jacques Chirac has carried on the Gaullist tradition of glad-handing African leaders but his current advisers (like Michel Dupuch) seem less friendly while ministers in Lionel Jospin's Socialist government treat Africans as they would treat anybody else...

Then in October a row blew up over a terracotta figurine of a ram given two years ago to French President Jacques Chirac by his staff as a birthday present...

He condemnedtheLibrevillesummit' sproposals for power-sharing as 'a diktat by the Frenchman Jacques Chirac friend of Sassou Nguesso intelligently supported by Omar Bongo who claims to be my relative'...

He is well known to Colonel Moammar el Gadaffi and to President Nelson Mandela (he set up a school for South African orphans in the apartheid era) and has been friendly with French President Jacques Chirac since 1983...

President Jacques Chirac had refused to see him he told Africa Confidential and advised him in a long and stormy telephone conversation to accept the proposal of the international mediators led by Gabon's President Omar Bongo that he share power with Sassou and serve as titular president for a transitional period...