From French flagship to national embarrassment

For 36 years and more than 1,800,000km travelled, the aircraft carrier Clemenceau represented France's power and pride.

Launched three months after the building of the Berlin Wall, the 24,200-tonne ship served through the Cold War and saw action in the Balkans, Lebanon and Iraq before being withdrawn from service in 1997.

Today, le Clem is a hulk, her massive engines removed and sold, her helicopters and jets long gone, her missile systems and huge cannon gutted.

Her journey toward decline is nothing short of a national humiliation. In 2003, French attempts to sell it for scrap failed because of the asbestos used in its construction.

After a costly operation to remove the asbestos, the aircraft carrier set off under tow last New Year's Eve, heading for a scrapyard in India. It would seem that the problem was, at last, off France's hands.

But what was to be le Clem's voyage into the sunset is turning out to be a cringing embarrassment.

The trip was dogged by a Greenpeace protest occupation early in its trip. Then Egypt refused to let the 265m ship enter the Suez Canal until France proved it did not break a 1989 international pact on the transport of toxic waste, the Basel Convention.

For three days, the now anonymous Hull Q790 performed useless circles just outside Egypt's waters, while Paris tussled with Cairo.