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Exercise utmost restraint: France

Ranvir Nayar in Paris

France has urged India and Pakistan to exercise maximum restraint in order to restore peace and calm along the international border after the flare-up arising from the shooting down of the Pakistani naval surveillance plane by the Indian Air Force on Tuesday.

A senior official of the French Ministere des Affaires Etrangeres told rediff.com that France had been closely monitoring the developments in view of the current flare-up.

``We ask both the countries to work towards restoring the state of detente and peace that had existed before the latest flare-up and call upon both the governments to exercise utmost restraint to prevent the situation from worsening further,'' the official said.

While stating that France was not interested in taking sides on the dispute and blaming one country or the other for provoking the current tension, the official maintained that France did not hold India responsible for the incident and neither did France believe that India had acted hastily in bringing the Pakistani plane down.

``We are not going to condemn one country or the other right now. We are just gathering more information on the entire incident and it is too soon to come to any conclusions on who is to blame,'' French officials told rediff.com in Paris.

They maintained that the French government was more interested in seeing the resumption of the peaceful and constructive dialogue that had been in evidence between India and Pakistan before the outbreak of the Kargil crisis and the current troubles.

``We urge the Indian and Pakistani leaders to work together in the spirit of the Lahore agreement and to try and defuse tension prevailing in the region as soon as possible,'' the officials said.

However, the French officials acknowledged that France attached tremendous importance to its relations with India, as one of the poles of the multipolar world that the French envisage. They also admitted in the present scenario, where France and India were building extremely close strategic, economic and political ties, the defence relations between Pakistan and France that had existed in the 70s and 80s would be scaled down.

Besides the United States, France has been the largest arms supplier to Pakistan. And much to India's consternation, in the eighties, France had supplied advanced defence systems like the Mirage aircraft, Exocet sea-launched missiles, advanced submarines and other defence items.

However, of late, and especially since the outbreak of the Pakistani intrusion in Kargil, France has been embarrassed by its past close ties with Pakistan. ``France is now increasingly uncomfortable about the situation that it finds itself in, especially from the point of view of the vast defence contracts that it has signed with Pakistan in the past. France does not want to be seen as arming Islamic fundamentalists that are being clearly propped up by the Pakistan government. Besides, France will also find it hard to convince India of its sincerity in developing a cosy relationship, if it keeps arming Pakistan,'' said international strategic observers based in Paris.

While French officials do not comment on the changes in their overall relations with Pakistan, they admit that the defence supplies to Pakistan will be reviewed. ``That is clearly a thing of the past now,'' officials told rediff.com. France has already held back the deliveries of eight Mirage aircraft and a submarine to Pakistan for the last two months, citing the then Kargil conflict and the mounting tension.

Though the French had only suspended the deliveries, it is likely that the deliveries will now be delayed by several months at the very least.

The official spokesperson of the Quai d'Orsay (the French foreign ministry) yesterday issued a brief statement expressing the French concern about the situation and urging the two sides to exercise maximum restraint.

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