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FRANCE-GERMANY-RUSSIA-US-WWI-HISTORY
Over 60 world leaders to attend Paris WWI commemorations
PARIS, Oct 18, 2018 (BSS/AFP) – More than 60 world leaders, including US
President Donald Trump and Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin, will travel to
Paris next month for commemorations of the end of World War I a century ago,
French officials said Thursday.
On November 10 — a day before the commemorations in Paris — French
President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel will also
attend a ceremony near Compiegne, northern France, where the armistice ending
the war was signed on November 11, 1918, Macron’s office said.
The main ceremony will take place at the Arc de Triomphe war monument in
Paris at 11 a.m. on November 11 — marking the time when guns finally fell
silent after four years of trench warfare and general European slaughter.
Later in the day, guests will be invited to participate in a Peace Forum,
to be opened by Merkel, an event which France wants to turn into an annual
multilateral peace conference.
Earlier in November, Macron will spend a week touring the country’s WWI
battlefields, including Verdun, scene of the longest-lasting battle which
left at least 700,000 dead on both sides.
“The idea is to commemorate our ‘poilus’ (hairy) ancestors,” the presidency
said, using a nickname for French WWI rank-and-file troops.
Macron will also “pay homage to the French people’s extraordinary capacity
— which has never failed — to rebuild and start anew after a war,” the
presidency said.
A special cabinet meeting will be held in Charleville-Mezieres, in the
Ardennes, an area which saw much destruction during the war and which today
suffers from de-industrialisation and high unemployment.
German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier will also attend a Franco-German
friendship concert on November 4 in the eastern city of Strasbourg, part of
the Alsace region which was returned to France in 1918 after being seized by
Prussia in 1870.
Only countries which “sent troops or workers to the European theatres of
war” have been invited to the Paris ceremonies, the presidential office, said
when asked to explain the absence of countries such as Saudi Arabia.
BSS/AFP/ARS/2010 hrs