French President Fran\u00e7ois Hollande and the German chancellor Angela Merkel are set to visit Moscow on Friday after a trip to Kiev, in order to find a peaceful solution to the escalating violence in Ukraine.<\/p>\n
“Together with Angela Merkel we have decided to take a new initiative,” Hollande told a news conference. “We will make a new proposal to solve the conflict which will be based on Ukraine’s territorial integrity.”<\/p>\n
The two European leaders decided Wednesday night on the trip and did not consult American officials about it, AP reports citing a senior French official.<\/p>\n
Hollande also added that he did not think it would be a good idea for Ukraine to join NATO.<\/p>\n
He called on the international community on Thursday to fulfil its “duty” to take action against Islamist extremists in Africa, saying that France could not go it alone, France24 reported.<\/p>\n
“There is a message that I want to send to the international community and to the biggest countries,” he told a bi-annual presidential press conference on Thursday. “Do your job. Don’t give lessons \u2013 act. Do your duty. No one else will do it in your place.\u201d<\/p>\n
“France cannot settle all the world’s conflicts,” he said.<\/p>\n
The African Union has backed plans for a regional five-nation force of 7,500 troops to defeat the deadly rise of Boko Haram in northeast Nigeria, and Chad has deployed its army to join the fight against the jihadists.<\/p>\n
France is supporting the operations by carrying out reconnaissance flights over border areas of Chad and Cameroon to provide the two nations with intelligence, defence officials in Paris have said.<\/p>\n
“We must help the Africans much more to act against terrorism,\u201d Hollande said. \u201cIf we don’t do it, countries will be destabilised once again.”<\/p>\n
France deployed troops to the Sahel region of Africa to fight against militant extremists after helping oust the Islamist forces that had seized much of northern Mali in 2013. The country is also taking part in US-led operations against the Islamic State group in Iraq and Syria.<\/p>\n
The United Nations Security Council last month called for a multinational military effort to tackle Boko Haram, expressing concern that its incursions were undermining peace and stability in Central and West Africa.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
French President Fran\u00e7ois Hollande and the German chancellor Angela Merkel are set to visit Moscow on Friday after a trip to Kiev, in order to find a peaceful solution to the escalating violence in Ukraine. “Together with Angela Merkel we have decided to take a new initiative,” Hollande told a news conference. “We will make … Continue reading “Hollande says Ukraine should not join NATO”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2961,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[49,3],"tags":[70,534,51,914,7278,7484],"class_list":["post-17664","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-europe","category-news","tag-eu","tag-france","tag-germany","tag-islam","tag-peace","tag-ukraine"],"cc_featured_image_caption":{"caption_text":false,"source_text":false,"source_url":false},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17664","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2961"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17664"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17664\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17665,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17664\/revisions\/17665"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17664"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17664"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17664"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}