The International Committee to Save the life of Mumia Abu-Jamal asked to be received by the French President of the Republic Jacques Chirac and his Prime Minister Lionel Jospin before they meet Clinton in Florence and at the Seattle summit.

The aim was to inform the French government of the point of view of the tens of thousands of citizens in France who have endorsed the Open Letter to Clinton, and to ask them at the occasion of their meeting with the US president to transmit the demand that Clinton order an investigation into the violation of Mumia Abu-Jamal's civil rights in such a way as to open the way to a new trial.

The diplomatic team of the Elysee Palace informed the International committee that "the President of the Republic and Mr Jospin have asked the Foreign Affairs ministry to receive a delegation of the committee."

A delegation of the committee was therefore received by the Foreign Affairs Ministry on Friday November 19th, at 11.30 A.M.

The participants were Daniel Gluckstein, Patricia Latour-Combes, Dominique Vincenot, Sylvain Bitter, Olivier Doriane, Jacques Cubaud.

They were received for an hour by Renaud Vignal, Plenipotentiary Minister, director of the American commission of the Foreign Ministry, with the assistance of Jean-Pierre Filiu, sub-director for North America and Cedric Prieto, in charge of the United States.

The three officials of the Ministry first indicated that the French government was very concerned by the fate of Mumia Abu-Jamal and had informed several times the American authorities of that concern.

Therefore the representative of the Foreign minister received our delegation with a positive mind, was ready to be informed of the campaign in France and internationally, as well as of the past, present and future initiatives of our committee.

To answer these questions, the International committee explained the campaign developing internationally and underlined that from a juridical point of view, President Bill Clinton had the power to intervene to obtain a new trial by directing an investigation to establish whether the civil rights of Mumia Abu-Jamal had been violated or not.

The delegation asked that the dossier be given to the President of the Republic and the Prime Minister so that they would be able to call upon the US president to take immediate action.

The International committee also informed the government representatives of the plans to organise an international delegation to Washington on January 12th and that initiatives were under way to seek a meeting with President Clinton or one of his representatives.

Concerning the juridical arguments produced by the Committee, the ministry officials underlined that this was for them a "new element". Up till then the French government had considered that the only possible interlocutors for an action to defend Mumia Abu-Jamal were the authorities of the State of Pennsylvania.

With reservations until it is confirmed by the juridical services of the ministry, the ministry official considers that the point of view developed by our committee can be a new and important approach in the action to save the life of Mumia Abu-Jamal.

This is the reason why, the officials of the Foreign affair ministry explained, they were interested by the information we gave them and would indeed transmit them to the Foreign Affair minister, the Prime minister and the President of the Republic.

The ministry official also made the commitment to inform the US authorities that they received the delegation of our committee and to inform them about the international delegation which is to go to Washington on January 12th.