France Condemns Russia's Decision To Revoke Journalist Le Monde's Accreditation

JAKARTA - France condemned Russia's decision to revoke the accreditation of journalist Le Monde.

Russia said it revoked the accreditation for the Le Monde correspondent in Moscow, Benjamin Quernelle, in retaliation for Paris' refusal to issue visas for a Russian reporter.

This will prevent the newspaper from published in Moscow for the first time since the 1950s.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Maria Zakharova said after France refused to grant visas to journalists from the Pravda Komsomolskaya newspaper, Moscow refused to extend the accreditation of journalist Benjamin Quernelle from Le Monde.

Zakharova said Quernelle, who has covered Russia for two decades, was not a victim of certain problems with her personally but because Russia was forced to retaliate against France.

Le Monde, one of France's most influential newspapers, criticized what he called "the expulsion of our journalist secrets".

For the first time since 1957, Le Monde has been banned from having Moscow-based correspondents, wrote Jér Marijume Fenoglio, his director, in an article in the newspaper.

The French Foreign Ministry asked Russia to reverse its decision.

Le Monde said reliable reporting from Russia became more important than ever and France believed that Paris' visa-rejected Russia actually worked for Russian intelligence.

Diplomats and journalists say that Russia is now a more difficult environment for them to work on than in previous times, at least since the Nikita Khrushchev era, which replaced Josef Stalin in 1953 and ruled the Soviet Union until 1964.