Even in Paris temperatures have not ventured above zero for three days

Even in Paris, temperatures have not ventured above zero for three days, and the cold spell is forecast to continue at least into early next week at least.The current temperatures, minus 8C in Paris yesterday, and minus 14- 15C in eastern and central France, are up to 10 degrees colder than average for the time of year.Paris and other French cities already have extensive emergency arrangements for homeless people and others sleeping rough in winter. The fifth was a pensioner who lived in a caravan in the Paris region.
Much of France has been in the grip of icy weather since Christmas Eve, when snow – and torrential rain and hail in the south – disrupted holiday travel arrangements for thousands. Two died in central Paris, one in the doorway of an apartment block being refurbished. Four of the five dead were homeless people in their fifties and sixties. The instruction came from the minister for emergency humanitarian action, Xavier Emmanuelli, in response to mounting public indignation that people could die in such circumstances in Nineties France. Local authorities across France were ordered yesterday to provide more help for people sleeping rough after five people died from cold over the Christmas period. The French said a “European” – probably a Frenchman – should have command.

Other recent differences between the two allies range from the Middle East to the handling of the Zaire refugee crisis, the US-led ousting of Boutros Boutros-Ghali as UN Secretary General and what Washington insists was a snub by France to the outgoing Secretary of State, Warren Christopher.. France’s contribution to the operation over southern Iraq, south of 33rd parallel, remains unaffected.Although the French Foreign Ministry said France continued to enjoy “excellent” relations with Washington, France’s decision to pull out of Operation Provide Comfort has annoyed the Clinton administration.France and the US have clashed recently over command arrangements in Nato’s Southern Command, based in Naples. In practice, France, like Britain, provides only a small air force – six planes – as its contribution to the operation, which is overwhelmingly American. Air force training flights were recently suspended because the annual fuel budget had been exhausted.

France is retrenching its military presence around the world because its forces are over-stretched and it must pay for the costly transition to an all-professional military on the British model to which President Chirac has committed himself.The French decision was seized on by Iraq yesterday as marking a split in the six-and-a-half-year-old Gulf War coalition. Although the operation is nominally humanitarian, it has clearly become a surveillance mission enabling the Gulf War allies to hit Saddam Hussein any time he moves.The British Foreign Office yesterday said it “noted the French position” but that the air surveillance operation continued to do useful work and should continue. Paris was recently instrumental in persuading Baghdad to meet UN conditions for recommencing oil exports.Heavy over-spending on its overseas military budget, which includes participation in the expensive peace-keeping operation in Bosnia, may be another factor. French officials had argued that without this provision, the operation would be purely military and as such France would be unlikely to approve it.France’s concern to improve its diplomatic and commercial relations with Iraq is believed to lie at the heart of its decision.

Some of these factions went over to Saddam’s side.While allowing Provide Comfort to continue from its base at Incirlik, the Turks still refuse British aid agencies access to northern Iraq. They have also discontinued the provision for ground reconnaissance. It was started in 1991 after the end of the Gulf War with the joint aim of protecting the Kurds of northern Iraq and ensuring that Iraq observed the terms of the cease-fire. A foreign ministry statement in Paris yesterday said the decision had been taken because the “humanitarian aspect originally envisaged” for the mission had been dropped. “Operation Provide Comfort” will be continued jointly by the other participants, the United States, Turkey and Britain. France is pulling out of allied surveillance operations over northern Iraq following what it says is a change in the brief.