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French block airlift of British troops to Basra
By Henry Samuel and Michael Smith
(Filed: 16/09/2003)


The French government has told an airline that it is not to ferry British troops to Basra, a ban that will be seen as reflecting Paris's opposition to the occupation of Iraq.

Corsair, which has been chartered numerous times to transport UK forces around the world, pulled out of a contract to fly reinforcements to Basra at the weekend.

About 1,400 more troops are being sent to Basra as part of an attempt to prevent the "strategic failure" predicted by Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, with a similar number expected to be announced within weeks.

A Corsair Airbus A330 was chartered to fly troops of the Royal Green Jackets from Brize Norton, Oxon, but at the last moment the French transport ministry grounded the aircraft citing safety concerns.

Transport ministry officials were reported yesterday as saying the move had nothing to do with safety but was a result of the intervention of the foreign ministry.

The foreign ministry denied the report, saying there was "no political motive". But British defence officials appeared to confirm that the ban was political and not technical.

"We have used them time and time again to fly troops into trouble spots," one said. "They have been everywhere for us. We always thought they were pretty robust."

A Corsair spokesman said most of the flights undertaken for the MoD took troops to training exercises. For security and insurance reasons they rarely flew to war zones.

"We did fly to Pristina during the Kosovo crisis, but only once it had been cleared for civil aviation."

Basra is already open to civilian aircraft.

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