LIBREVILLE (AFP) — Given its key role in France's myriad and sometimes murky African interests, the sudden sharpening of Gabon's rhetoric against its former colonial master is something of a puzzle.
The future of Franco-Gabonese relations is in question after a public dispute over immigration policy and a report on French state television on President Omar Bongo Ondimba's impressive Parisian real estate portfolio.
At stake are not only four decades of close ties between Bongo's regime and the Paris political elite, but also France's important commercial interests in this oil-rich and politically-stable west African state.
What began as a disagreement over the expulsion from France of two Gabonese students for failing to pass their exams, has within days become a much more threatening diplomatic crisis with as yet unclear repercussions.
On Wednesday, the French ambassador to Gabon was summoned for a dressing down over France Television's report on Bongo's reported 33 homes and flats in Paris, which include an 18-million-euro (24-million-euro) mansion.
This followed a wave of anti-French sentiment in Gabon's pro-government daily L'Union, which has interpreted both incidents as French intrigue and part of an alleged "plot against Gabon and its president".
On Tuesday, Gabonese immigration officers turned a Frenchman away at the airport as part of a threatened crackdown on irregular workers among France's 10,000 expatriates.
Paris has attempted to play down the crisis.
Officials from the office of French immigration minister Brice Hortefeux told AFP the two young Gabonese had been sent home because their studies were a "manifest failure" and not because of any "ill-will towards Gabon".
As to the report on Bongo's houses, foreign ministry spokeswoman Pascale Andreani said: "This matter is a case of press freedom, to which we are attached. That said, we'll look at the note we have received from Gabon."
The carefully chosen words seem unlikely to calm Gabonese anger.
France has "failed in its obligations to protect a serving head of state," the Gabonese foreign ministry said, by revealing the president's private address and "endangering his physical wellbeing and that of his family".
Gabon, the site of an important French military base, has warned it will take action following the "irresponsible behaviour" of the French media and "certain political figures in pursuit of popularity".
L'Union also attacked France for seeking to dominate the oil, hospitality and forestry sector, and also leisure and tourism management, an area in which it says Gabon has observed "an accelerating moral depravity".
While one well-placed French observer noted that "this is not the first quarrel to emerge between France and Gabon, relations are often prickly," other experts warned there may be more to the present dispute than meets the eye.
"There is obviously something much more fundamental at play here than dissatisfaction with TV footage or people being expelled," said writer Jean-Francois Obiang. "Right now, all we are seeing is the tip of the iceberg.
"There has always been a strategy of sporadic revolt. There's nothing new here ... As for the media reports on the president's estates, there's nothing fresh compared to the original police enquiry," he underlined.
French police investigated the property holdings of both Bongo and his Republic of Congo counterpart Denis Sassou Nguesso after complaints oif corruption lodged against them by rights and expatriate groups.
No action was taken, reportedly because of lack of cooperation from Libreville and Brazzaville.
Obiang believes France will retain a pivotal role in the region, despite statements by President Nicolas Sarkozy that he wants to break the cosy Franco-African relationship of which Bongo is one of the pillars.
Other observers suspect an intra-Gabonese power struggle for the succession to Bongo, the world's longest-serving head of state with more than 40 years in power, may be a factor in the spat.
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