French press review 17 January 2013

Algeria and Mali dominate the French newspapers today....

The main headline in Catholic La Croix reads, "Mali, the conflict widens".

Libération speaks of "The desert war".

Le Figaro summarises the latest developments by saying that, as French troops engage in fighting on the ground in Mali, "The islamists strike back in Algeria".

Even business daily Les Echos, which normally treats non-financial news with an aloofness bordering on contempt, this morning runs a main headline reading "Conflict in Mali spreads to the Algerian gas industry".

According to Le Figaro's front page editorial, Algeria is the key to the Malian conflict. Yesterday's hostage taking at a gas facility near the Libyan border is being seen as a warning to Paris, to Algiers and to the wider international community that the bad guys in Mali are capable of striking international interests anywhere in their Sahel stomping ground.

Les Echos points out that, even during the dark years of the Algerian civil war, the oil and gas industry was left unmolested by both sides, simply because everyone recognised the economic importance of the sector and hoped to profit from it once hostilities came to an end.

But that was a local war. This time, the situation is very different, and the target has been carefully chosen to hurt both Algiers, which makes most of its foreign exchange earnings from the sale of oil and gas, and Europe, which buys one-third of Algerian gas output.