FRANCE MARKS WW1 CENTENARY
Macron to host world leaders as Paris kicks off commemorations
FRANCE kicks off a week of World War I commemorations yesterday, with some 80 leaders from around the globe preparing to fly in for a ceremony marking a century since the guns fell silent.
French President Emmanuel Macron is gearing up for a busy week of diplomacy that will see him play host to leaders, including US President Donald Trump and Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin.
He will also be criss-crossing northern France, visiting the battlefields where hundreds of thousands of men lost their lives in the trenches.
Macron will notably use the spotlight to issue a rallying cry against populism — in the presence of “America First” Trump and other nationalist leaders.
The commemorations will culminate in a ceremony at the Arc de Triomphe in Paris on Sunday, attended by dozens of leaders including Trump, Putin and Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel, 100 years to the day since the armistice.
The ceremony at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier on the Champs-Elysees avenue will be held under tight security following a string of deadly jihadist attacks in France over the past three years.
Remembrance events began yesterday with a concert celebrating friendship between former wartime enemies France and Germany in the border city of Strasbourg, attended by Macron and German President FrankWalter Steinmeier.
Macron will then spend the week visiting the Western Front battlefields, from Verdun to the Somme.
Tomorrow, in honour of the “black army” of former colonial troops who fought alongside the French, he and Mali’s President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita will visit Reims, a city defended by the African soldiers.
Britain’s Prime Minister Theresa May will join Macron on the Somme on Friday, while on Saturday, he heads for the village of Rethondes, where the armistice was signed, with Merkel.
War commemorations aside, Macron is set to use his tour of northern France to visit areas hit hard by industrial decline, where far-right leader Marine Le Pen performed strongly in last year’s presidential election.
“After paying homage to those who died for their country, it will be back to dealing with social and economic problems,” said Bruno Cautres of political think-tank Cevipof.
Macron, who has struggled to shake off an image as a “president of the rich”, will zip through 17 towns, holding Wednesday’s weekly cabinet meeting in the Ardennes, an area which was battered by the war and today suffers high unemployment.
After Sunday’s ceremony, world leaders are set to attend a three-day peace forum opened by Merkel, an event that France wants to turn into an annual multilateral peace conference.