France Lied to U.S. During Iraq Crisis; French officials assured President Bush of their support in the showdown with Saddam Hussein, but instead abandoned America in favor of commercial interests

0 Comments | Insight on the News, April 13, 2004

Byline: Kenneth R. Timmerman, INSIGHT

For Secretary of State Colin Powell, the U.S.-French divorce began on Jan. 20, 2003, when French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin blindsided him during a press conference outside the U.N.

After a special session of the Security Council devoted to the war on terror, held at de Villepin's personal request, Powell had driven over to the French U.N. ambassador's official Park Avenue residence, where de Villepin was to host him to an exclusive lunch.

Instead, de Villepin stayed behind at the U.N. and announced to the world that France would never support a U.S.-led military intervention against Saddam Hussein. As Powell saw the man he thought was his friend appear on the video monitors in the French ambassador's residence his jaws dropped, says his deputy and confidant, Richard Armitage. "He was very unamused," Armitage recalls. "When he's unamused, he gets pretty cold. He puts the eyes on you and there is no doubt when his jaws are jacked. It's not a pretty sight."

During the session, de Villepin "preened and postured," recalled a deputy to U.S. Ambassador John Negroponte. After a tepid homage to the victims of 9/11, de Villepin urged the United Nations to take over the global fight against terror by sending international bureaucrats to Third World nations that were harboring or sponsoring terrorist groups. He wanted the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund to get involved, and proposed a new international arms-control treaty to track the commercial use and shipment of radioactive materials, surely a move that would prove as useful in preventing nuclear terrorism as the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty has been in preventing nations such as Israel, Pakistan, India and North Korea from going nuclear.

"Let us look at things with lucidity," the Frenchman said finally, his voice quivering with compassion. "Terrorism feeds on injustice. So an equitable model of development is therefore necessary to definitely eradicate terrorism."

After briefly summarizing these proposals, which no one took seriously, de Villepin told the news cameras that he now wanted to say "a few words" about Iraq. That caught Powell's ear.

Just the evening before, over a private dinner at the Waldorf Astoria, the two men had discussed possible wording the French government could accept in a new U.N. resolution (the 18th, in fact) that would authorize the use of force against Iraq. Powell would say later that he had thought they were close to an agreement. Diplomats at the U.N. were actually laying bets at 100-to-1 odds that the U.S. would get the votes for the resolution. None of them was prepared for what the Frenchman said next.

"If war is the only means of resolving the problem, then we have reached a dead end," de Villepin said. "A unilateral military intervention will be the victory of might makes right, an attack on the primacy of international law and morality." The U.N. should wait until the U.N. inspectors made their next report, scheduled for January 27, before deciding on any further action, he said. At that point, "Iraq must understand that it is time for it to cooperate actively."

To Powell and his advisers, it was clear that de Villepin was trying to run out the clock so Saddam could finish hiding his weapons and prepare for war.

Later, in the reconstruction of the day's events he and other top French officials gave to reporters, de Villepin denied he had tried to ambush Powell, or that he had disguised an intention to use the ministerial session of the U.N. Security Council on terrorism as a platform to attack the United States on Iraq. "There was no ambush," he said. "I did not mention the word 'Iraq' once in my speech. It was only at a press conference afterward that I discussed Iraq in reply to a very aggressive question."

I read that account to a U.S. official who knew de Villepin and had watched the tape of that press conference many times. "That's just a lie," he said.

Indeed, the written record of de Villepin's press conference, provided to me by the French foreign ministry, shows on the contrary that it was de Villepin who shifted directly to Iraq at the very beginning of his press conference, and made a lengthy condemnation of the United States well before the questions began. "We will not associate ourselves with military intervention that is not supported by the international community," he said finally. "Military intervention would be the worst solution." Even the Washington Post, which highlighted international opposition to the Bush administration's position on Iraq, called de Villepin's performance "theatrical."

When de Villepin finally showed up for the luncheon, it got worse. German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer berated Powell and President [George W.] Bush for having decided to move forward with military action, and claimed that Iraq "has complied fully with all relevant resolutions and cooperated very closely with the U.N. team on the ground," certainly an Alice-in-Wonderland version of the facts even as they were presented by the well-heeled U.N. chief inspector, Hans Blix.