France's ambassador to Belarus has left the country, reportedly following Minsk's order. The move comes after his meeting with a banned civil society group and a diplomatic snub to President Alexander Lukashenko.
Proposal comes against a background of international outrage over Belarus's diversion of a Ryanair flight on Sunday and the arrest of a dissident journalist on board.
French President Emmanuel Macron, on an official visit to Lithuania, on Tuesday offered to mediate for a "peaceful transition" of power in neighbouring Belarus, meeting with exiled Belarusian opposition leader Svetlana Tikhanovskaya and calling for new 'free elections under international observation' following the crisis in Belarus prompted by the contested August re-election of strongman president Alexander Lukashenko .
Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel also discussed growing tensions in the eastern Mediterranean and the coup in Mali, during talks at the French president's retreat in the south of France.
In November 2004 nine French soldiers and an American humanitarian worker were killed at Bouaké in the Ivory Coast in a bombing raid carried out by that country's air force. Yet more than eleven years later the foreign mercenaries who are thought to have conducted the raid have never been brought to account. Now a French investigating judge has recommended that three senior French ministers who served under President Jacques Chirac at the time - Dominique de Villepin, Michèle Alliot-Marie and Michel Barnier – stand trial for hindering the initial investigation. Antton Rouget reports.
