Africa, France | featured news

The French president says the country will raise its domestic terror threat level after military action in Mali and Somalia, promising to increase protection at public buildings and transportation networks.

Convinced that their battlefield strategy will work, the rebel forces are refusing France's demands that they negotiate with the Libyan leader to peacefully end their uprising. As the Libyan war grinds on across three fronts and rebel forces find themselves pinned down on their own territory outside two strategic eastern oil cities, the rebels' most resolute European ally, France, is insisting that they negotiate with Moammar Kadafi to peacefully end their 5-month-old uprising.

In a joint opinion piece to be published Friday, the leaders of the United States, Britain and France lay out in stark terms their contention that Libya's future must not include its leader, Moammar Gadhafi.

France and Britain said NATO should be doing more to pressure the Libyan regime. French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe said the alliance should be firing on the weapons being used by Gadhafi’s troops to target civilians in Misrata.

The Turkish prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, accused France of seeing Libya as a source of 'oil, gold mines and underground treasures'.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy, speaking after an emergency summit of world powers in Paris, announces 'our planes are stopping attacks' on Benghazi and that France and its partner nations are determined to stop Moammar Kadafi's 'killing frenzy.' Sarkozy says the summit agreed to demand and enforce an 'immediate cease-fire' in Libya.