Corsican city of Bastia ruled on Thursday that French was the only language allowed in the exercise of public office. "This decision amounts to stripping Corsican parliament members of the right to speak their language during debates," said the island's executive council president Gilles Simeoni and Corsican Assembly president Marie-Antoinette Maupertuis. New negotiations between Paris and Corsican leaders appear to have been unblocked by the conditional release of two men convicted of participating in the 1998 murder of the island's prefect Claude Erignac, the highest-ranking French official to have ever been assassinated