France races after Italy . . .

[Corlyss_D]

Can't do anything about their labor problems except capitulate; can't do anything about their Muslim problems except capitulate, so why not attack someone who has no responsibility for either?

French PM defends role in smear plot scandal

By Jon Boyle
Reuters
Thursday, May 4, 2006; 9:16 AM

PARIS (Reuters) - French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin denied on Thursday allegations he had launched a corruption probe into a presidential rival, trying to silence calls for his resignation.

Villepin said Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy had not been discussed as a potential target of the probe by a senior intelligence official he ordered to look into claims public figures took bribes via accounts in a Luxembourg finance house.

Sarkozy, the leading conservative contender for 2007 presidential elections, has lodged a formal complaint and demanded judges find out who was behind the smear campaign.

"The name of Nicolas Sarkozy was not raised in connection with any affair. He was referred to (in his capacity) as interior minister," Villepin said. He did not elaborate.

Citing threats from terrorism, mafia money and the defense of French economic interests, Villepin said as foreign minister it had been his job to get to the bottom of the affair.

"It was my duty as foreign minister, it was my responsibility ... to carry out this verification and that's the mission I gave to General Rondot," he said.

Villepin has been issuing almost daily denials of wrongdoing in the so-called Clearstream affair which has further sapped his low ratings, hamstrung government business and fanned support for the far-right ahead of the presidential elections.

The Clearstream affair -- swiftly dubbed the "French Watergate" by the opposition -- began with anonymous charges in 2004 that Sarkozy and other politicians held accounts in a Luxembourg-based finance house linked to kick-backs in the bribe-ridden sale of French frigates to Taiwan in 1991.

The list of accounts quickly proved bogus but the probe went on, leading to complaints by Sarkozy and others that it was an elaborate attempt to discredit top politicians.

"FLAGRANT LIE?"

Rondot's apparent contradiction of Villepin's version of events prompted some newspapers to accuse him of lying to the country. "Villepin -- Flagrant Lie" the left-leaning Liberation newspaper headlined its front page on Thursday.

French media is awash with speculation that Villepin wanted to use the scandal to sink Sarkozy's ambition to run for president, a charge Villepin has vehemently denied.

He accused critics on Thursday of re-writing history in the light of his subsequent presidential rivalry with Sarkozy.

But the conservative Le Figaro newspaper said even if Villepin was telling the truth, he still had to explain why he ordered a second probe by the DST domestic intelligence service when Rondot had made clear the Clearstream list was a fake.

Sarkozy, suspicious of his rival and angry he was not informed that his name had been cleared, has vowed to continue his fight for the truth.

The opposition said the scandal was born of the intense rivalries dividing the governing Union for a Popular Movement party that Sarkozy leads, sapping its ability to govern and leaving France open to international ridicule.

"I want the entire government to be replaced," Socialist Party leader Francois Hollande told France Inter radio.*
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/co ... 00607.html

*So do we.

[jbuck919]

All I can say is, we'll always have Paris.