Paris - President Zuma was hastily evacuated from a hall because of a bomb scare while addressing academics here yesterday.
Zuma had been talking to the French Institute of International Affairs (Ifri) and was taking questions when the organisers asked everyone to leave for security reasons. A South African official said Ifri had received a bomb threat.
Zuma was about to answer some tough questions about South Africa’s position on the conflict in Ivory Coast when the hall was cleared.
Two Ivorians asked him why South Africa had broken the African consensus on the post-election crisis.
They asked why, when the West African regional organisation Ecowas and the African Union had backed Alassane Ouattara as the winner of the November 28 presidential elections, South Africa had come with a different position.
Zuma said he was confident that the AU, working together with the Economic Community of West African States, would help Ivory Coast to resolve its post-election crisis.
Zuma was to leave France last night for Mauritania to participate in a meeting of the AU panel.
Zuma did tell Ifri that he did not think that the wave of democratic revolutions sweeping across North Africa would engulf the Sub-Saharan countries.
He gave South Africa’s full support here yesterday to the democratic movements sweeping across North Africa.- Foreign Editor