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France protests us plot { May 16 2003 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.iht.com/articles/96487.htmlhttp://www.iht.com/articles/96487.html
Copyright © 2003 The International Herald Tribune | www.iht.com
France protests 'plot' by U.S.
Brian Knowlton/IHT IHT
Friday, May 16, 2003
WASHINGTON French officials on Thursday complained formally to the White House, State Department and Congress that France had been victimized by a campaign of "repeated disinformation," allegedly fed by Bush administration sources accusing Paris of providing military and diplomatic aid to Iraq.
The administration denied the existence of any such campaign.
Scott McClellan, a White House spokesman, said of the French allegations, "There is, I don't think, any basis in fact to it." He added, "France is an ally; they're still friends."
Among other things, the stories assert that France and Germany supplied Iraq with precision switches that could be used in nuclear weapons; that French companies sold spare parts to Iraq for warplanes and military helicopters; that France possessed prohibited strains of human smallpox; and that France, most recently, helped Iraqi leaders escape to Europe by providing them with travel papers.
The forceful and public French complaint, in the form of a letter from Ambassador Jean-David Levitte, underlined the depth of ill feelings that still divide the two countries over Iraq. The complaint was first reported in Thursday editions of The Washington Post.
In addition to sending the letter in Washington, the Foreign Ministry in Paris took an unusual step of its own, instructing French diplomats to monitor the U.S. news media for signs of orchestrated anti-French disinformation.
"We have decided to count the untrue accusations that have appeared in the U.S. press and that have deeply shocked the French," said a Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, Marie Masdupuy, Reuters reported.
The stories have been rankling French diplomats for months.
They see such reports as not just hurtful to U.S.-French relations - several have been seized on by members of Congress to call for investigations or punishment of the French - but also as possibly linked to dangerous eruptions of anti-French sentiment. They said, for example, that a man was severely beaten in a Los Angeles restaurant because he was speaking French.
The challenged reports are "all untrue, and all serious," and "not acceptable," said Nathalie Loiseau, a spokeswoman at the French Embassy in Washington.
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, whose department and supporters are most often cited as a possible source of the anonymously sourced stories, said that "Certainly, there's no such campaign out of this building."
Loiseau did not specifically point to anyone in Washington as the source of the articles, but she said that France could only assume that journalists were being truthful when they cited unnamed sources in the administration.
"We don't know who talked to journalists," she said, "but we would like it to stop, because it's inaccurate and it discredits our country." The impression given, she said, was that France had "protected a tyrant and a bloody dictator" and was "hostile to the United States."
The administration, while denying the French allegation, has made no secret of its deep unhappiness with French opposition during the Iraq debates at the United Nations, and later during NATO debates over Iraq-related assistance to Turkey. Some France-watchers have been surprised by anti-French virulence.
Tom Bishop, chairman of the French Department at New York University, said that he was "not somebody who blindly approves French policy," and that Paris's absolutist opposition at the UN struck him as questionable.
Still, he said, it appeared that there was "an anti-French campaign that I firmly believe is being whipped up by Washington" and by some in the press.
"What's coming out of the right-wing think tanks in Washington, and elsewhere, is not innocent, I think, and is not accidental," he said.
Jeremy Shapiro, associate director of the Center for the United States and France, at the Brookings Institution, said that the French believe "that there is a campaign, if not by the U.S. government, then at least within the U.S. government, to discredit them." And while "they don't believe this is actually presidential policy, they do believe the president or the White House has not been active enough in counteracting it."
But Shapiro said that the complaint might not serve France well. It might be seen, he said, as a "kind of petulance."
Perhaps the most sensitive story challenged by the French was a Washington Times report May 6 that French diplomats in Syria had helped "an unknown number" of Iraqi leaders escape to Europe by providing them with travel papers. It cited "U.S. intelligence officials," then quoted "a second Bush administration official" as saying, "Now you have the French helping the bad guys escape from us." France issued a categorical denial.
A White House spokesman said he was "not aware of any evidence that substantiates that," and a State Department spokesman later echoed that comment.
The administration's frustration with France has had a clear, and sometimes troubling, public echo. Web sites, conservative columnists and late-night television hosts have mercilessly mocked the French. A Time magazine cartoon depicts a U.S. invasion of France that puts Humvees on streets and an American flag over the Arc de Triomphe, and installs an "'administrator' who isn't always attuned to local sensitivities" - Ronald McDonald. International Herald Tribune
Copyright © 2003 The International Herald Tribune
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