PARIS, Oct 6 (AFP) - A new book examining the antagonistic relationship between presidents Jacques Chirac and George W. Bush claims the United States bugged the French leader's telephone to find out his moves in opposition to the Iraq war.
American surveillance listens in what happens "in the privacy of the Elysee palace (Chirac's offices), according to several French sources in the military and intelligence fields," the book, "Chirac contre Bush: L'Autre Guerre" (Chirac against Bush: The Other War), said.
Released Wednesday, the work by French newspaper journalists Henri Vernet and Thomas Cantaloube said that an unidentified former senior French military official found out about the bugging during a Washington lunch with a Bush administration official.
"The relationship between your president and ours is irreparable on the personal level. You have to understand that President Bush knows exactly what President Chirac thinks of him," the US official was reported as saying abruptly.
The book added that the French official, who knew the American very well, understood the message immediately: "That the 'services' were "listening in on' the private presidential telephone calls" by Chirac.
Eavesdropping on him was made easy because the French leader regularly spoke on unsecure mobile telephones, the book said.
It said such spying did not surprise French authorities, and backed reports saying that virtually every office in the UN headquarters in New York was bugged, forcing senior diplomats there to hold sensitive discussions in embassy glass "cages" that were regularly screened.
The authors said the practice became widely known in the 1980s when the US representative to the UN at the time, Jeane Kirkpatrick, used sign language to inform the French head of the UN Security Council, Luc de la Barre de Nateuil, that US intelligence had bugged his office.