© Photograph: Philippe Wojazer/ReutersThe French president, Francois Hollande, right, speaks with members of Malian associations in France at the Elysee Palace in Paris.
François Hollande, who had signalled a hands-off policy on ex-colonies, has allowed French troops to intervene in Mali.
During the election campaign last year, François Hollande was attacked for being too indecisive, and nicknamed "Flamby" after a dessert - not exactly in the superman category. Seven months later, the same Hollande sanctioned an operation by French commandos in Somalia to try and rescue a French hostage, and started an unpredictable war in France's former colony of Mali. He received support from mainstream opposition leaders who oppose him on almost every other issue - and from Britain too, which has agreed military assistance to help transport foreign troops and equipment to Mali.
Nothing predestined this Socialist apparatchik to become a war president, particularly after having campaigned for the early return of French troops from Afghanistan, which was completed a few weeks ago.
Soon after he was elected last May, Hollande designed a strategy for the Mali crisis, which had erupted a few months earlier when radical Islamist groups took over the northern half of the country and imposed tough sharia laws over the population. The new president didn't want to see French troops leading the battle, as has happened in the past - for example in Chad, when Libyan tanks were threatening its southern neighbour. Hollande wanted to show times had changed.
As a sign of his new, non-interventionist approach to France's former colonies, Hollande only last month refused publicly to answer calls from President François Bozizé of the Central African Republic, for French troops to come and stop a rebel advance towards its capital. Hollande said: "We are not present to protect a regime ... That time is over."
