The French Connection

[firstsgtmike]

March 13, 2003
The French Connection
By WILLIAM SAFIRE


ASHINGTON

France, China and Syria all have a common reason for keeping American and British troops out of Iraq: the three nations may not want the world to discover that their nationals have been illicitly supplying Saddam Hussein with materials used in building long-range surface-to-surface missiles.

We're not talking about short-range Al Samoud 2 missiles, which Saddam is ostentatiously destroying to help his protectors avert an invasion, nor his old mobile Scuds. The delivery system for mass destruction warheads requires a much more sophisticated propulsion system and fuels.

If you were running the Iraqi ballistic missiles project, where in the world would you go to buy the chemical that is among the best binders for solid propellant?

Answer: to 116 DaWu Road in Zibo, a city in the Shandong Province of China, where a company named Qilu Chemicals is a leading producer of a transparent liquid rubber named hydroxy terminated polybutadiene, familiarly known in the advanced-rocket trade as HTPB.

But you wouldn't want the word "chemicals" to appear anywhere on the purchase because that might alert inspectors enforcing sanctions, so you employ a couple of cutouts. One is an import-export company with which Qilu Chemicals often does business.

To be twice removed from the source, you would turn to CIS Paris, a Parisian broker that is active in dealings of many kinds with Baghdad. Its director is familiar with the order but denies being the agent.

A shipment of 20 tons of HTPB, whose sale to Iraq is forbidden by U.N. resolutions and the oil-for-food agreement, left China in August 2002 in a 40-foot container. It arrived in the Syrian port of Tartus (fortified by the Knights Templar in 1183, and the Mediterranean terminus for an Iraqi oil pipeline today) and was received there by a trading company that was an intermediary for the Iraqi missile industry, the end user. The HTPB was then trucked across Syria to Iraq.

Syria has no sophisticated missile-building program. What rocket weaponry it has comes off the shelf (and usually on credit) from Russia, so it therefore has no use for HTPB. But cash-starved Syria is the conduit for missile supplies to cash-flush Saddam, as this shipment demonstrates. We will have to wait until after the war to find out how much other weaponry, for what huge fees, Saddam has stored in currently un-inspectable Syrian warehouses.

The French connection — brokering the deal among the Chinese producer, the Syrian land transporter and the Iraqi buyer — is no great secret to the world's arms merchants. French intelligence has long been aware of it. The requirement for a French export license as well as U.N. sanctions approval may have been averted by disguising it as a direct offshore sale from China to Syria.

I'm also told that a contract was signed last April in Paris for five tons of 99 percent unsymmetric dimethylhydrazine, another advanced missile fuel, which is produced by France's Société Nationale des Poudre et Explosifs. In addition, Iraqi attempts to buy an oxidizer for solid propellant missiles, ammonium perchlorate, were successful, at least on paper. Both chemicals, like HTPB, require explicit approval by the U.N. Sanctions Committee before they can be sold to Iraq.

Perhaps a few intrepid members of the Chirac Adoration Society, formerly known as the French media, will ask France's lax export-control authorities about these shipments. U.N. inspectors looking at Iraq's El Sirat trading company might try to follow its affiliate, the Gudia Bureau, to dealings in Paris.

Is this account what journalists call a "keeper," one held back for publication at a critical moment, made more newsworthy by the Security Council debate? No; I've been poking around for only about a week, starting with data originating from an Arab source, not from the C.I.A. (Anti-Kurdish analysts at Langley have it in for me for embarrassing them for 18 months on Al Qaeda's ties to Saddam, especially in the terrorist Ansar enclave in Iraqi Kurdistan.)

This detail about the France-China-Syria-Iraq propellant collaboration makes for dull reading, but reveals some of the motivation behind the campaign of those nations to suppress the truth. The truth, however, will out.




Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company | Privacy Policy

[wrbones]

William Safire is an ass, but when he's right, he's right! LOL.

Ya better have yer **** wired if ya wanta start in on people like him.

[wrbones]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/events/crisis_in_the_gulf/decision_makers_and_diplomacy/58568.stm

Monday, February 23, 1998 Published at 13:48 GMT


Iraq: the French connection

French President Jacques Chirac (right) meets Iraqi Foreign Minister Mohammed Saeed Al-Sahhaf


By Henri Astier




France has long had a special relationship with Iraq
France has historically been Iraq's best friend in the West. The special relationship began three decades ago, when General de Gaulle cultivated Arab countries in the wake of the 1967 war in the Middle East. This policy was seen by Paris as a way of boosting trade ties with oil-rich nations and extending French influence in an area which had been dominated by the "Anglo-Saxons".



In 1974 Jacques Chirac called Saddam Hussein a personal friend
By 1970 France was one of Iraq's main trading partners. Diplomatic and economic ties were given a crucial boost in 1974, when the then French Prime Minister, and current President, Jacques Chirac, called Saddam Hussein a personal friend; his government agreed to build an experimental nuclear reactor near Baghdad, which was later bombed by Israel. Arms sales continued apace, as did French infrastructure projects in Iraq; by the late 1970s France was second only to the USSR as supplier of both civilian and military equipment to the Iraqis.

The trend continued under French socialist governments in the 1980s. Like other Western countries, France strongly backed Iraq in its war against Iran. Paris supplied Baghdad with sophisticated weaponry, including Mirage fighter bombers and Super Etendard aircraft equipped with Exocet missiles. When the Iraqis found it hard to pay up, Paris rescheduled the debt.



France's relations with Iraq were soured by the 1991 Gulf War
France's response to the invasion of Kuwait in 1990 must be viewed in the light of this long-standing relationship. The French felt that they were in an ideal position to persuade Saddam Hussein to withdraw; just a few days before Operation Desert Storm began, French envoys were in Baghdad, trying to find a diplomatic solution to the crisis.

On the face of it, it seems hard to understand why France remains more favourably-inclined towards Baghdad than other Western countries. Economically, ties with Iraq have been a costly disaster. After helping Saddam Hussein build airports, factories and weapons, France is saddled with $4bn in unpaid bills. Military cooperation also backfired: the French helped arm a power which they later had to fight. And politically, French diplomacy has yielded scant results.



France wants diplomacy to work
So why does Paris still prefer to view Saddam Hussein as a potential ally, rather than an enemy? Many in Britain and the US argue that France's policy towards Iraq is driven by the prospect of lucrative deals for French companies, notably oil giants, once UN sanctions are lifted. This may be true, but it's not the whole story. Most previous contracts with Iraq have been anything but lucrative for the French. The belief that diplomacy can work wonders without the threat of force, and a perennial reluctance to follow the Anglo-Saxons' lead, are probably as strong as any perceived economic interest.

[wrbones]

http://kitchen.bianca.com/shack/kitchen/sub/posts/2003_Apr_06/28245/28245.html

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Sun Apr 6 01:22:28 2003
From: from the GERMAN's no less
Subject: yet more of the French-Iraq oil connection
"I would call The French scum bags, but that would be an insult
to bags of scum" - Dennis Miller

Dealing with Saddam, French style
Given the current bonne entente between Paris and Berlin, it isn't
easy to find anything in the German press resembling critical analysis
of why France and Germany are adopting such a virulent anti-Washington
line. The current issue of the quality weekly Die Zeit, however, carries
such a critical piece, and a good one it is, too.

Titled "French Connection", Michael Mönninger's article
says it's no wonder that France is against a war with Iraq — French
business interests are worried about losing their lucrative deals
with Baghdad, especially the oil giant TotalFinalElf. Following Iraq's
invasion of Kuwait in 1991, France's exports to Iraq collapsed but
now they're spiralling upwards — worth a record 660 million euros
last year, compared with 398 million in 2000. And Mönninger points
out that at last November's international industrial trade fair in
Baghdad, 130 French companies, including Alcatel, Boygues, Renault
and Peugeot were represented. Referring to the impressive, 2,000-square-metre
French stand, placed right at the fair's entrance, Mönninger notes:
"Because of its opulent appearance, France was awarded the fair's
gold medal — for the sixth time in a row."

Gracing Mönninger's piece is a wonderful photo from 1975 of Saddam
Hussein (then dictator and current dictator of Iraq) and Jacques Chirac
(then prime minister and current president of France). The dashing
tyrant and the suave politician on the plush couch had rather a lot
to smile about as Iraq had just awarded a contract for military hardware
and for the building of an atomic reactor in Osirak near Baghdad to
France, and Chirac felt so moved by the growing links between the
two lands as to refer to Saddam as his "personal friend".
The Israelis destroyed the reactor in 1981, but how many of the 130
Mirage jet fighters, tanks and rockets (to the value today of 25 billion
euros) that were delivered to Saddam before 1991 are still in service
is unknown.

And then there's the TotalFinalElf story. Iraq's oil fields were divided
up between the British and the French in 1920, but following the 1974
nationalisation of the oil industry, the British were shown the door.
French interests, however, remained untouched and TotalFinalElf continues
to operate two huge oil fields, Majnoon and Bin Umar, in western Iraq.
Although only five per cent of France's oil consumption needs are
currently met by Iraq, production could be ramped up seriously if
stability, with or without regime change, were to return to the banks
of the Euphrates.

Mönninger also points out that Iraq sympathies are ingrained in the
France's political culture. The socialist defence minister Jean-Pierre
Chevnement, resigned in 1991 as a protest against the country's participation
in the Gulf War, and the wife of the rightist leader Jean-Marie Le
Pen heads a group that makes a number of trips each year to Iraq to
deliver aid. And, on top of all that, a cross-party "French-Iraq
friendship group" from the French Senate that went to Baghdad
in 2001 described the effects of the UN trade embargo as "creeping
genocide".

At a time when the German media are filled with vicious anti-Americanism,
Michael Mönninger's article in Die Zeit is all the more valuable for
its focus on the overlooked French connection to Saddam.

[wrbones]

http://www.wadinet.de/news/iraq/nw1199_frenchconnection.htm

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Saddam's French Connection
Does the Iraqi dictator have the goods on French politicians?
AS FRANCE'S political leaders feign high-mindedness in their opposition to waging war in Iraq, could it be that a little-publicized threat of blackmail--issued by none other than Saddam Hussein a year after France sided with the United States in the first Gulf War--weighs ever so slightly in the back of their minds?



Saddam with Chirac (far right) in France in 1975
The threat by the Iraqi leader, published here for the first time in English, was reported in a 1992 French book, now out of print, titled "Notre Allié Saddam" (Our Ally Saddam). Here's what Saddam said:

As for financiers, industrialists and above all those responsible for military industry, the question must be put to French politicians: Who did not benefit from these business contracts and relationships with Iraq? . . . With respect to the politicians, one need only refer back to the declarations of all the political parties of France, Right and Left. All were happy to brag about their friendship with Iraq and to refer to common interests. From Mr. Chirac [now the center-right president] to Mr. Chevenement [the socialist former defense minister] . . . politicians and economic leaders were in open competition to spend time with us and flatter us. We have now grasped the reality of the situation [of France's support for the 1991 Gulf War, a betrayal in Saddam's eyes]. If the trickery continues, we will be forced to unmask them, all of them, before the French public.

Author-journalists Claude Angeli and Stéphanie Mesnier had prompted this response by asking Saddam about financial ties between his regime and French industrialists and politicians, specifically inquiring: "Has Iraq financially supported French politicians and political parties?"

It's a query that has come up periodically in the French press, and been hotly denied by French politicians. Reporters such as Angeli, and others at newspapers such as Le Monde, Libération, and La Tribune, have documented tangential links, but are still searching for a smoking gun. And, in an outcome that has become a traditional feature of French corruption investigations--such as the 1998 parliamentary inquiry into the role of French oil companies in the country's foreign policy, as well as a 2001 judicial inquiry into political-party financing--few whistle-blowers have turned up, let alone paper trails.

What is known is this: French businesses, led by the oil conglomerates, established warm and profitable relationships with Iraq's Baathist regime dating back to the 1970s, when Iraq ditched Anglo-American companies and nationalized its oil industry. Again, after the 1991 Gulf War, French companies moved aggressively into the business channels opened up by the U.N.'s oil-for-food deal with Iraq. France's defense industry has also profited from sales to Iraq. What's the difference between this and, say, past U.S. commercial ties to Baghdad? The socialist economic model that links both France and Iraq: As is widely documented, few business deals between the state-controlled conglomerates are made without heavy massaging by French politicians.

So, if there's something to the line of questioning about financial support from Baghdad to Paris--and decades of cozy relations among leading politicians certainly suggests it's worth finding out--then what could be worse for France's top political dogs than to be outed by Saddam himself?

He has threatened to expose all ties if they should betray him by supporting war again. Lo and behold, France's leaders continue to oppose disarming Saddam by force, even as their stance meets criticism from their own backbenchers and harms France's relations with its European neighbors.

The trouble with this appeasement strategy--if indeed the French pols are hiding something--is that they'll probably get caught anyway. After Saddam is ousted from Baghdad, the dissidents who take power are sure to open up the country's archives, East Germany-style, and expose any complicity and impropriety that oiled the channels between France and the Iraqi ancien régime.

Better for the French ruling class to come clean now. That's the only way it can salvage any dignity at all.


Melana Zyla Vickers is a columnist at TechCentralStation.com and a senior fellow at the Independent Women's Forum.

[wrbones]

http://college4.nytimes.com/guests/articles/2003/03/20/981160.xml <br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
ASHINGTON — What will the world discover, after the war is over, about which countries secretly helped Saddam obtain...

[wrbones]

http://www.usainreview.com/2_11_Chirac_Connection.htm




February 11, 2003



Chirac's Saddam Connection
By Thomas W. Murphy

French President Jacques Chirac's special relationship with Saddam Hussein goes back almost 30 years. As the French Prime Minister in 1974, Chirac was instrumental in boosting France's diplomatic and economic ties with oil-rich Iraq. Chirac called Saddam Hussein "a personal friend" after Chirac and Hussein finalized the agreement for the construction of a French-built nuclear reactor near Baghdad; the reactor that was later bombed by Israel.

Chirac's long-standing relationship with Saddam Hussein and France's vast financial interests with the current Iraqi Government goes a long way in explaining France's seemingly inexplicable passion to keep Saddam Hussein in power.

France has historically been Iraq's best friend in the West. The French-Iraqi connection started shortly after France pulled out of NATO in 1966.

Prior to the Arab-Israeli war of 1967, France was the chief supplier of military equipment to Israel. In fact, France helped Israel build its nuclear reactor at Dimona, supplied Israel with enriched uranium, and actively helped Israel develop nuclear weapons.

In the days leading up to the Arab-Israeli War, France abandoned Israel and threw its hat in with the Arabs nations. De Gaulle doubted the Israeli's could defeat the combined Arab nations and saw the coming war as an opportunity to extend French influence and cultivate relationships with the oil-rich Arab nations.

By the end of the 1970s France was second only to the Soviet Union as a supplier of both military and civilian equipment to the Iraqis. The trend continued throughout the 1980s. France strongly backed Iraq during its war with Iran. Unlike other western governments who gave minimal help to Iraq hoping to stave off an Iraqi defeat and maintain the status quo; France supplied Iraq with Mirage Fighters, Super Etendard aircraft with Exocet missiles, and sophisticated munitions.

The Gulf War of 1991 provided little more than a hiccup in French-Iraqi relations. By 1994, France was calling for a loosening of UN sanctions and along with Russia attempting to short-circuit UNSCOM at every step. France pushed to allow Iraq to sell more oil. When the U.S. and Britain demanded tough controls to ensure the increased oil revenues would not be used to buy arms, the French objected saying such controls would undermine Iraqi sovereignty. From 1997 on, France fought to get the UN sanctions lifted entirely.

Last year, under intense pressure from France and Russia, the UN loosened restrictions on high-tech equipment, enabling Iraq to obtain a broad range of equipment with potential military applications; ranging from agricultural sprayers that can be used to disperse chemical and biological weapons to neutron generators that can be used as crude nuclear triggers and are compatible with a known Iraqi design for a gun-implosion type nuclear device.

Hundreds of French firms do business with Iraq. France sold $1.5 billion worth of goods to Iraq last year under the oil-for-food program; the most of any nation. French giants Alcatel and Renault do a booming business in Iraq, and French oil firms hold contracts with Saddam Hussein's government estimated at over $60 billion for oil exploration and development; oil contracts that cannot be worked until UN sanctions are lifted.

In light of France's financial interests and longstanding ties to Saddam Hussein's Iraq, its hardly surprising that France opposes military action to depose Saddam Hussein. A new Iraqi government might not be inclined to honor oil contracts with Saddam's old buddies.

And then again, as one U.S. intelligence expert somewhat facetiously put it, "France will jump on board with the U.S. the minute their agents in Baghdad get done shredding all evidence of their illicit arms sales to Iraq."

Related articles: Security Council Sells Out

[wrbones]

http://www.nypost.com/commentary/70641.htm






BLIX'S FRENCH CONNECTION BENEFITS SADDAM

By DEBORAH ORIN
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

HANS BLIX
The fix is in.


March 13, 2003 -- CALL it the Hans Blix French Connection.
If you're wondering why chief U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix often seems to be in the pocket of France, Russia and Iraq, consider this - they're the countries that got him his job in the first place.

So perhaps it's no surprise that Blix hails every grudging move by Saddam Hussein as a triumph but skipped lightly over a smoking gun that his own inspectors found - Iraq's failure to report an aerial drone that, Blix belatedly admitted, was a clear violation.

Nope, this French Connection isn't some weird conspiracy theory by the Bush White House. In fact, it's thoroughly documented in reports a few years back in The New York Times, which these days doubles as the voice of the anti-war movement.

Back in the late 1990s, a new U.N. weapons inspection team was created after Saddam kicked the old inspectors out, but France, Russia and China were so unhappy about the idea that they abstained.

The U.N. secretary general proposed Rolf Ekeus - like Blix, a Swedish arms-control expert, but unlike Blix, a man with a track record for toughness. So France & Co. used their U.N. Security Council veto (sound familiar?) to knock out Ekeus.

"France and China joined the Russians in objecting to the nomination of Rolf Ekeus. The three want the nomination process reopened so that someone more acceptable to Iraq can be found," The New York Times reported on Jan. 19, 2000.

Bingo - Blix. He had a track record, but it wasn't exactly sterling.

"The fact that Blix was picked was indicative of what has been the fundamental problem - Russia, France and China have wanted to take a soft stand on Saddam Hussein," said Columbia University professor Edward Luck, who heads the Center for International Organization.

And they got what they wanted - Blix gives Saddam the benefit of the doubt and actually seemed more irate at Secretary of State Colin Powell's assertion that Iraq may have penetrated the inspection system, which Blix angrily contradicted.

The weasels knew what they were doing.

[firstsgtmike]

By a Vietnam Vet

Who Stands Alone
Author Unknown

Eleven thousand soldiers lay beneath the dirt and stone,
all buried on a distant land so far away from home.
For just a strip of dismal beach they paid a hero's price,
to save a foreign nation they all made the sacrifice.

And now the shores of Normandy are lined with blocks of white,
Americans who didn't turn from someone else's plight.
Eleven thousand reasons for the French to take our side,
but in the moment of our need, they chose to run and hide.

Chirac said every war means loss, perhaps for France that's true,
for they've lost every battle since the days of Waterloo.
Without a soldier worth a damn to be found in the region,
the French became the only land to need a Foreign Legion.

You French all say we're arrogant. Well hell, we've earned the right--
We saved your sorry nation when you lacked the guts to fight.
But now you've made a big mistake, and one that you'll regret;
you took sides with our enemies, and that we won't forget.

It wasn't just our citizens you spit on when you turned,
but every one of ours who fell the day the towers burned.
You spit upon our soldiers, on our pilots and Marines,
and now you'll get a little sense of just what payback means.

So keep your Paris fashions and your wine and your champagne,
and find some other market that will buy your aeroplanes.
And try to find somebody else to wear your French cologne,
for you're about to find out what it means to stand alone.

You see, you need us far more than we ever needed you.
America has better friends who know how to be true.
I'd rather stand with warriors who have the will and might,
than huddle in the dark with those whose only flag is white.

I'll take the Brits, the Aussies, the Israelis and the rest,
for when it comes to valor we have seen that they're the best.
We'll count on one another as we face a moment dire,
while you sit on the sideline with a sign "friendship for hire."

We'll win this war without you and we'll total up the cost,
and take it from your foreign aid, and then you'll feel the loss.
And when your nation starts to fall, well Frenchie, you can spare us,
just call the Germans for a hand, they know the way to Paris.

[greybeard]

France doesn't get any foriegn aid from the USA, but it's a great piece otherwise!!!