MESSAGE
| DATE | 2004-10-09 |
| FROM | Ruben Safir Secretary NYLXS
|
| SUBJECT | Subject: [hangout] Poor French are upset we discovered their corruption
|
WASHINGTON, Oct. 8 - The Bush administration's handling this week of a
report on Saddam Hussein's attempts to purchase weapons and buy
influence has angered French officials and set back a year of American
efforts to repair the rupture caused by the Iraq war, French and other
European officials said Friday.
Advertisement
The anger of France and others is focused on the assertions in the
report by Charles A. Duelfer, the top American arms inspector in Iraq,
that French companies and individuals, some with close ties to the
government, enriched themselves through Iraq's efforts to gain
influence around the world in the years before the war.
Administration spokesmen said Friday that there was no intent in
releasing the report to endorse its findings or blame France or any
other country for corruption, or to link any alleged corruption to that
country's subsequent opposition to the war in Iraq.
On the other hand, Vice President Dick Cheney and others in the
administration are citing the Duelfer report as evidence that Mr.
Hussein had sought to corrupt foreign countries in order to have
sanctions on Iraq lifted. Although Mr. Cheney did not say so directly,
French officials say it was obvious that he was referring to France and
other countries that had opposed the war.
French officials say that the report's charges, based on documents and
interviews in Iraq, have been denied in the past, but that Mr.
Duelfer's report did not contain the denials. They also complain that
France was not given more than one day's notice before the report was
issued.
They were incensed that the report also mentioned Americans in
connection with similar charges but that unlike the French they were
not identified because of American privacy regulations.
"You protect American citizens, but you put in danger a number of
private citizens in other countries who may be innocent people," said
Jean-David Levitte, the French ambassador to the United States. "These
names are from an old list, published months ago, and those mentioned
denied it flatly."
A European diplomat said the damage to French-American relations was so
great that it could disrupt a new spirit of cooperation with France on
other fronts, namely the joint American and European efforts to put
pressure on Iran to dismantle its suspected nuclear weapons program and
to organize an international conference next month on Iraq.
"This report does great damage," Mr. Levitte said. "There really is a
sense of outrage in Paris. We don't want to create a situation that
will put us back to one year ago. But these are dirty tricks at the
expense of France, with the White House putting the finger on the name
of France." Mr. Duelfer's main conclusion - that Iraq did not have
unconventional weapons when the Bush administration was charging that
it had them - got the most publicity when the 918-page report was
issued.
But the administration highlighted charges that under Mr. Hussein, Iraq
was successful in circumventing the sanctions placed on it by the
United Nations by purchasing conventional weapons with money siphoned
fraudulently from a program authorized by the United Nations in 1996,
allowing Iraq to sell oil and use the revenue for food, medicine and
other human necessities.
To curry favor around the world, Iraq set up a system in which some
individuals and companies were able to profit by manipulating the
oil-for-food program. Among those enriched in this process, the report
said, were French, Russian and other officials.
Administration spokesmen said Friday that the United States did not
endorse the allegations that anyone was enriched by Iraq's practices,
only that Iraq was trying to buy influence and weaken sanctions.
"It doesn't say that those transactions were completed," said Richard
A. Boucher, the State Department spokesman. "It doesn't say whether or
not governments intervened. It doesn't say whether or not the
individuals declined. It doesn't really say what happened."
But that was not the tone adopted by Mr. Cheney and other officials
caught up in President Bush's tough re-election campaign. In Florida on
Thursday, Mr. Cheney said Mr. Hussein had used oil funds to corrupt
"some employees of the United Nations as well as other governments in
the hopes that they would work with him to undermine the sanctions."
A day before releasing the Duelfer report, the State Department called
in officials from several embassies in Washington to give them a
preview. That meeting itself stirred anger, according to those who
attended. "We were not given the text of the report," said a diplomat
from a country other than France. "We were directed to the C.I.A. Web
site, and we couldn't download it," because the site was swamped.
Mr. Levitte said he had called top officials at the White House and the
State Department to protest "in very strong terms that I considered
this very unfair and not good behavior from a great democracy, to
protect your own citizens and give publicity to others in the Web site
of the C.I.A."
He said the officials had "noted with some embarrassment that I had a
point."
Try The New York Times Electronic Edition Free for 1 Week! --
__________________________
Brooklyn Linux Solutions
So many immigrant groups have swept through our town that Brooklyn,
like Atlantis, reaches mythological proportions in the mind of the
world - RI Safir 1998
DRM is THEFT - We are the STAKEHOLDERS - RI Safir 2002
http://fairuse.nylxs.com
http://www.mrbrklyn.com - Consulting
http://www.inns.net <-- Happy Clients
http://www.nylxs.com - Leadership Development in Free Software
http://www2.mrbrklyn.com/resources - Unpublished Archive or stories and
articles from around the net
http://www2.mrbrklyn.com/downtown.html - See the New Downtown
Brooklyn....
____________________________
NYLXS: New Yorker Free Software Users Scene
Fair Use -
because it's either fair use or useless....
NYLXS is a trademark of NYLXS, Inc
|
|
