French security circles close to the investigation of the shooting Monday, March 19, which left a teacher and three children dead at the Ozar Hatora school in Toulouse, told debkafile Tuesday that they have no leads as yet to the killer or suspects. He vanished by motorbike as mysteriously as he arrived at the school.  All that can be deduced for now was that he was a trained - and possibly a hired – assassin – so explaining the video camera around his neck.

The Sarkozy plan for Syria is based on reserving a quarter of Syrian territory as a safe haven protecting a quarter of its population under a coalition air shield. No foreign boots will touch the ground. After rounding up the UK, Italy, Turkey and Qatar, the French president is ...

The Arab League was not first to make the Syrian crisis a regional concern. Big power rivalry got there first. The US and France, like the Sunni rulers, seek Bashar Assad's downfall, while Russia and China are propping him up as their firewall for the Islamic regime in Tehran.

The lion's share is promised France of Libya's oil reserves with smaller stakes for Britain, Italy and Qatar. But the rebels may be counting their chickens too fast. First, the war is not yet won and the promises may stay on paper and second, only the US has the ...

The leading rebel group delays transferring from Benghazi to Tripoli because Qaddafi loyalists are still fighting there. He is regrouping his forces for the next act of the Qaddafi drama.

After Hama, US and French ambassadors to Damascus Robert Ford and Eric Chevalier will Friday, July 15, try to reach the eastern Syrian oil town of Deir al-Zar on the Iraqi border to meet opposition leaders, although debkafile's reports government forces are poised to stop them. The town is also a Sunni tribal and Kurdish center.
In a key policy shift, US President Obama Tuesday questioned Bashar Assad's legitimacy. And another first: A bomb blast damaged an East Syrian oil pipeline.

Tuesday July 12, the day French President Nicolas Sarkozy arrived in Afghanistan and stated that a quarter of France's 4,000-strong contingent would be pulled out by the end of 2012,  Afghan President Hamid Karzai's half-brother, Kandahar strongman Ahmad Wali,was shot dead by a bodyguard. This was no coincidence, debkafile's sources note: Taliban was again refuting the accounts of the situation in Afghanistan presented by US, British and French leaders as having little resemblance to reality.

The visits the US and French ambassadors, Robert Ford and Eric Chevalier, paid to Hama Friday, July 8, in the thick of the half-million anti-Assad turnout, offered a rare glimpse of the quest by Barack Obama, Nicolas Sarkozy and Tayyip Erdogan for a Syrian compromise: It would leave Bashar Assad in place provided he accepts reforms and makes room for the opposition in government. But Turkish troops still remain poised on the Syrian border over his head.

Wednesday, July 6, the Palestinian Authority notified the Obama administration that early next week it would file a request with the UN Security Council for admission to the UN as a full member recognized as an independent state within the 1967 borders. But debkafile reports the US got in first, having agreed with European powers and Russia to have the request put on ice by the Security Council consenting to discuss it behind closed doors - without setting a date.

Profound disagreements among three allies and within their administrations are hampering progress in the Libyan operation. NATO and Arab props crumple.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy has quietly warned that North Korea is using its crisis with the South to cover up its planned transfer to Iran of nuclear weapons systems parts and extra-fast centrifuges for uranium enrichment that could help Tehran go into bomb production in the first half of 2011, debkafile's sources report. He has asked pro-Western Persian Gulf leaders to try and persuade President Barack Obama to take strong military action against North Korea to abort delilvery.