[lit-ideas] The Duelfer report accuses Paris of rampant bribery.

http://www.nationalreview.com/script/printpage.asp?ref=/miller/miller200410120842.asp
October 12, 2004, 8:42 a.m.
The French Connection
The Duelfer report accuses Paris of rampant bribery.

A prominent French politician fingered as a recipient of bribes in 
Iraq's Oil-for-Food scandal insists that he's not guilty of anything — 
but that other leading French figures might be.

"I have never received any gifts from the Iraqi government," said former 
French interior minister Charles Pasqua, after the CIA's Duelfer report 
identified him as receiving eleven million barrels of oil in exchange 
for promoting policies favorable to Iraq.

Pasqua then switched to speaking about himself in the third person, Bob 
Dole-style, and said that others may not be so innocent: "Charles Pasqua 
is not involved, but maybe other former ministers are involved."

Maybe other foreign ministers are involved. Whatever the truth about 
Pasqua's own involvement in the Oil-for-Food scam, his comments indicate 
that the revelations about French corruption in the Duelfer report may 
represent only the tip of a very big iceberg.

Indeed, French political leaders have longstanding ties to Iraq — and 
chief among them is President Jacques Chirac (whose intricate 
relationship with Saddam Hussein is described in brief here and in more 
depth here).

Pasqua himself is by no means in the clear: The Duelfer report clearly 
identifies him as a partner in Hussein's plot "to induce France to aid 
in getting sanctions lifted." What's more, Pasqua is already at the 
center of a French corruption probe for a set of charges that have 
nothing to do with Iraq. The former interior minister appears to be 
taking these other allegations quite seriously. Last month, he won 
election to the French Senate — and his critics say he ran for office 
simply because the post grants him immunity from prosecution.

Even without Pasqua, the CIA survey appears to have uncovered a vast 
conspiracy aimed at persuading the French government to oppose U.S. 
policies on Iraq. "As of June 2000," it says, "Iraq had awarded 
short-term contracts under the [Oil-for-Food] program to France totaling 
$1.78 billion, equaling approximately 15 percent of the oil contracts 
allocated."

The French foreign ministry has tried to dismiss the report's findings: 
"These accusations against companies and individuals have not been 
verified either with the persons concerned or the authorities of the 
countries concerned," said a spokesman last Thursday. The French 
ambassador to the United Nations, Jean Marc de la Salbiere, was more 
forthright: "These allegations are unacceptable," he said (according to 
the New York Sun).

Yet the report describes Iraq's French connection in some detail:

Saddam ordered the MFA [Ministry of Foreign Affairs] and other 
ministries to improve relations with France, according to recovered 
documents. The documents revealed that the IIS [Iraqi Intelligence 
Service] developed a strategy to improve Iraqi-Franco relations that 
encompassed inviting French delegations to Baghdad; giving economic 
favors to key French diplomats or individuals that have access to key 
French leaders; increasing Iraqi embassy staff in Paris; and assessing 
the possibilities for financially supporting one of the candidates in an 
upcoming French presidential election.

Moreover, the IIS paper targeted a number of French individuals that the 
Iraqi's thought had close relations to French President Chirac, 
including, according to the Iraqi assessment, the official spokesperson 
of President Chirac's re-election campaign, two reported 'counselors' of 
President Chirac, and two well-known French businessmen. In May 2002, 
IIS correspondence addressed to Saddam stated that a MFA (quite possibly 
an IIS officer under diplomatic cover) met with [a] French 
parliamentarian to discuss Iraq-Franco relations. The French politician 
assured the Iraqi that France would use its veto in the UNSC against any 
American decision to attack Iraq, according to the IIS memo.


To be sure, Hussein-era documents should not necessarily be taken at 
face value. Yet the Duelfer report goes on to include specific 
information on Iraq's French connection:

  Iraq gave 14 million barrels of oil to French businessman Patrick 
Maugein, whom it considered "a conduit to French President Chirac." (The 
Duelfer report does add that this claim about Maugein's link to Chirac, 
obtained from "a former Iraqi official," is "not confirmed.")

  "In 1988, Iraq paid $1 million to the French Socialist party, 
according to a captured IIS report dated 9 September 1992. Abd-al Razzaq 
Al Hashimi, former Iraqi ambassador to France, handed the money to 
French defense minister Pierre Joxe, according to the report. The IIS 
instructed Hashimi to 'utilize it to remind French Defense Minister, 
Pierre Joxe, indirectly about Iraq's previous positions toward France, 
in general, and the French Socialist party, in particular.'" (Joxe has 
denied this happened.)

  Former Iraqi deputy prime minister Tariq Aziz "says he personally 
awarded several French individuals substantial oil allotments. According 
to Aziz, both parties understood that resale of the oil was to be 
reciprocated through efforts to lift UN sanctions, or through opposition 
to American initiatives within the Security Council."

Participants in the Oil-for-Food scam also included the French oil 
companies Total and SOCAP, businessman Michel Grimard, and the 
Iraqi-French Friendship Society, according to the Duelfer report.

Perhaps one day the French will regret not having joined President 
Bush's Coalition of the willing — because it meant they weren't on the 
ground to destroy these papers of mass corruption before Charles Duelfer 
and his team found them.


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