Perhaps it's not surprising that French media coverage of humanitarian issues is dominated by its former colonies.

Historically France was the main player from Tunis to Brazzaville, and those ties still bind.

In recent weeks the French public has been treated to the blow by blow account of France's lead role in solving the political impasse in Ivory Coast, where President Laurent Gbagbo, who survived the 2002 coup attempt that split the country in two, is struggling to hold onto power.

From the French point of view, Gbagbo lucky to have any power at all: not only did he lose half of his country to rebels, but his official political mandate expired in 2005. This was made clear to Gbagbo last week in the U.N. resolution drawn up by France which places eye-popping powers in the hands of Prime Minister Charles Konan Banny until elections can be held a year from now.

As the latest chapter in the Ivory Coast saga played out, one of France's three leading newspapers and arguably its most serious, Le Monde, got its hands on a copy of a letter from President Gbagbo to Secretary General Kofi Annan. In it, Gbagbo said he was not at all in agreement the proposed resolution, which he described as an affront to his country's sovereignty. "This will not be accepted by the government... of which I am the legal and legitimate representative," he said, protesting too much?

Gbagbo's petulance might have gone down in history as a lot of hot air had several permanent members of the Security Council (China, Russia, and - just France's bad luck - the United States) not concurred: they are the ones who forced changes to the document, claiming that the U.N. resolution - or any international document, for that matter - should not take precedence over a country's own constitution. It was a technical point, really, but a big one, and in the end France had to concede - it certainly couldn't afford its resolution to pass with the stain of abstentions - and the final draft passed unanimously.

It still didn't meet with Gbagbo's acceptance, however. Or Le Monde's, which lamented the compromise. This made me wonder how often leaders in major Western newspapers devote themselves entirely to the dissection of a U.N. Security Council resolution concerning a west African nation. In this case, I wonder how much it had to do with injured French pride on the international stage, more public slapping of Gbagbo, or, a long shot, genuine interest in peace in Ivory Coast, where 750,000 internally displaced people are still waiting to go home?

Gbagbo said he would not fully apply the resolution. Prime Minister Charles Konan Banny has vowed to implement it. We await the outcome.