PARIS: With the recent terrorist attacks on Riyadh and Casablanca, French authorities say are going to exceptional lengths with regard to the security arrangements they are preparing for the G8 summit to be held on June 1-3 at the French spa city of Evian.
French anti-terrorist authorities won’t say whether they have any hard information in the matter, but police sources note that “it wouldn’t be unlikely” that Evian could have been chosen as the objective of a new attack.
And although French police say they had already devised special plans for the security arrangements for Evian, they now note that they’ve been told to redo their preparations once again.
The number of French military assigned to Evian has been upped to 15,000, whereas French military planes and helicopters will be ever present in the skies over Evian as well as Geneva, whose Cointrin International Airport will be used by dignitaries. Several batteries of surface-to-air missiles will also be deployed, not to mention several other weapons systems which police refuse to identify.
French police will also use Evian to introduce a new special battle outfit, which has been code-named “Robocop,” and has an eery space age look about it.
Speaking at Sathonay Camp in the Rhone department where his men are making preparations to use the new gear, CRS Lt. Eric Davane, head of Unit 46, admits that “we hope that the new uniforms will have a destabilizing effect on the agitators.”
Especially as the new gear is accompanied by high-tech tactics that will see police make use of such new armaments as baseball-bats and flash-balls, equipment that French police had until now often spoken of deploying, but of which they had never actually made use.
As France makes final preparations for the G8 summit, President Jacques Chirac is said by his advisers to feel somewhat “ruffled” by what he considers as “potshots” being taken at him by the White House.
Bush, who’s not hidden his extreme displeasure with the French head of state’s obstinacy over Iraq, has been playing cat and mouse with regard to his coming to France to attend the summit.