France kicks off a week of World War I commemorations from Sunday, with some 80 leaders from around the globe preparing to fly in for a ceremony marking a century since the guns fell silent.
Photo: Wikimedia Commons
French President Emmanuel Macron is gearing up for a busy week of diplomacy that will see him play host to leaders including US President Donald Trump and Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin.
He will also be criss-crossing northern France, visiting the battlefields where hundreds of thousands of men lost their lives in the trenches.
Macron will notably use the international spotlight to issue a rallying cry against populism -- in the presence of "America First" Trump and other nationalist leaders.
The commemorations will culminate in a ceremony at the Arc de Triomphe in Paris on November 11 attended by dozens of leaders including Trump, Putin and Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel, 100 years to the day since the armistice.
The ceremony at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier on the Champs-Elysees avenue will be held under tight security following a string of deadly jihadist attacks in France over the past three years.
Remembrance events begin on Sunday, November 3 with a concert celebrating friendship between former wartime enemies France and Germany in the border city of Strasbourg, attended by Macron and German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier.
Macron will then spend the week visiting the Western Front battlefields, from Verdun to the Somme.
On Tuesday, in honour of the "black army" of former colonial troops who fought alongside the French, he and Mali's President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita will visit Reims, a city defended by the African soldiers.
Britain's Prime Minister Theresa May will join Macron on the Somme on Friday, while on Saturday he heads to the village of Rethondes, where the armistice was signed, with Merkel.
After next Sunday's ceremony, world leaders are set to attend a three-day peace forum opened by Merkel, an event which France wants to turn into an annual multilateral peace conference.
