PARIS, April 9, 2008 (LPAC) -- Yesterday, out of 574 members of parliament, 227 voted in favor of a "no confidence" vote (motion de censure) on the issue of France's return to NATO and sending additional troops to Afghanistan. In order to bring down a government, 288 votes are required.

The motion states, "We want to enlighten the French on the dangerous break which the President and his government are making with the prevailing national consensus on the principles of our nation's military and strategic independence. The opening of negotiations on the return of France to the NATO integrated command structure, the marked comprehension for the nefarious American intervention in Iraq, the speech made by the head of state before the U.S. Congress, have marked the stakes of a global Atlanticist alignment whose pertinence and opportunity for our country we object to. This alignment is confirmed by the Presidential decision to accede to the American administration's demands to reinforce France's war effort in Afghanistan.

"In the first instance, we oppose the Presidential decision because we refuse to get stuck into a war without purpose and without end.

"Secondly, we oppose this decision, for it has nothing to do with Afghanistan but much to do with the Atlanticist obsession of the President of the Republic and his project of bringing back France in to the integrated command of NATO. By abdicating its autonomy in matters of military and strategic decision, a capability which has been safeguarded by all the Presidents of the [de Gaulle's] Fifth Republic, and by abandoning its fight for multilateralism and by forgetting its ambitions for a European defense pillar, France would lose its freedom of choice in the world. France would be tied to a doctrine of blocs that it has always rejected.

"By announcing his decision before the British Parliament, while the national legislature had never been informed, and by refusing to allow representatives to state their choice by a vote, the heads of state and government have humiliated the Parliament and revealed their conception of democracy: one executive, and those that execute."