PARIS, May 5: French diplomats said that the country’s latest observation satellite, Spot-5, launched on May 4, will become operational in two months’ time.

The satellite was launched on Saturday morning (May 4) aboard a Ariane-4 launcher from French Guyana. With its stereoscopic vision, Spot-5 is capable of providing 3-D images of the earth, and is also capable of picking up details on the ground that are as small as 2.5 metres.

It will permit France’s Centre national d’etudes spatiales (CNES) the French equivalent of NASA, in association with scientists from Belgium and Sweden, to prolong by at least five years their joint programme that provides continuous observation of the earth, a programme that the French government originated in 1986.

But the satellite will also have all-important military uses, to which end an agreement was signed April 25 between the Direction generale pour l’Armement (DGA), which represents the French defence sector, and the CNES, as well as Spot-Image, the civilian organisation that sells photos taken by France’s observation satellites, for all three to develop jointly the military uses of photos taken by Spot-5.

Had indeed Spot-5 been launched earlier in the year, say the diplomats, France, indeed the European Union and the United Nations, would not have been obliged to give in to Israeli pressure and disband an inspection mission that the UN was to have sent to Jenin.

At Friday’s daily press briefing, Quai d’Orsay spokesman Francois Rivadeau noted that the best intelligence France was able to obtain on the alleged massacre at Jenin was provided by on-the-ground intelligence provided by way of its consulate in Jerusalem. For the moment, France has refused to reveal what it was able to learn on its own about what really happened at Jenin.

All that French authorities have been willing to say until now is that they’ve chosen to depend on information provided jointly by the EU representations present in the Palestinian territories.

Some non-European sources say, however, they’re convinced that French on-the-ground intelligence, if released, could have proved damning for the Israeli army’s recent incursion into Jenin, that indeed it planned on making use of the intelligence to provide leads for the United Nations mission of inspection that was to have been sent to Jenin, but was recently disbanded.

With the launch of Spot-5, France hopes to no longer have to rely on foreign sources of intelligence, whether it involves another Gulf War, or the present Israeli incursion into Palestine. French diplomats have noted, off-the-record, their doubts over the accuracy of a satellite photo widely circulated by Israeli sources which would indicate that a very small part of the refugee camp was in fact destroyed by its forces during their recent incursion into Jenin.