In the Sahel region "France provides unreserved support" to the governments in their fight against terrorism, Sarkozy said at the French Ambassadors' annual conference at the Elysée.

    He underlined that France stands by “Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and Libya”. “Their fight against terrorism is ours ,” Sarkozy added.

    “I remind you that the Detroit of Gibraltar is only 12km,” said the French President, stressing the geographic proximity between the Maghreb and Europe.

      Sarkozy pointed to the danger of the setting up of a possible “terrorism arc of crisis” stretching from Pakistan to the Sahel, saying that currently there is no  operational coordination between the groups operating in the different regions of this  arc, “but should the situation worsen, the risk of the emergence of a continuous chain linking the terrorists’ bases of Quetta (Pakistan) and south Afghanistan to those of Yemen, Somalia and the Sahel would increase.”