French, Russian politicians listed as recipients of Saddam's largesse

WASHINGTON (AFP) - The Iraqi government of Saddam Hussein issued millions of dollars in lucrative oil export vouchers to leading French, Russian and other foreign politicians as part of a concerted effort to win their assistance in lifting UN sanctions against Iraq, a US weapons inspector said in a report made public here.
While the Iraqi intelligence service tried to bribe many foreign nationals, it paid particular attention to influential personalities in France and Russia because the two countries hold permanent seats on the UN Security Council, said the report prepared by chief US weapons inspector Charles Duelfer, who has perused tonnes of secret Iraqi documents seized in the wake of the US-led invasion of the country.
"Iraq sought out individuals whom they believed were in a position to influence French policy," Duelfer, the special advisor to the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), concluded.
The French targets, according to his report made public Wednesday, included government ministers, politicians, journalists and business people.
Among the recipients named in the Iraqi documents is former French interior minister Charles Pasqua, who received export vouchers for almost 11 million barrels of crude that could be easily converted into cash, the report states.
Saddam's regime also tried to find a way to influence President Jacques Chirac by making payments to businessman Patrick Maugein, who the Iraqis believed had access to the French leader.
The allegations contained in Duelfer's report first surfaced in January when a Baghdad newspaper published the names of some 200 people, political organisations and religious figures whom it said received free crude oil from Saddam's regime.
Pasqua, Maugein, Russian officials and others implicated in the scandal denied the allegations at the time.
Duelfer said in his report that the transactions were executed under the UN-run 60-billion-dollar oil-for-food program that was launched in 1996 in order to alleviate the suffering of the Iraqi people under a UN oil embargo imposed in the wake of Iraq's 1990 invasion of Kuwait.
The program allowed limited supervised sales of Iraqi oil under the condition that the proceeds would be used to buy food and medicine for impoverished Iraqis.
In all, as of June 2000, Iraq awarded France 1.78 billion dollars worth of short-term oil contracts, equaling approximately 15 percent of all the contracts allocated under the oil-for-food program, the report pointed out.
However, courtship of French individuals and organizations by Iraqis predated even the first Gulf War, Duelfer points out.
In 1988, Iraq paid one million dollars to the French Socialist Party, with the Iraqi ambassador to France handing over the money directly to then-Defense Minister Pierre Joxe, according to the report, which cites Iraqi intelligence documents.
The Iraqi documents are quoted as saying that the ambassador, Abd-al-Razzaq Al Hashimi, was instructed to remind Joxe "about Iraq's previous positions toward France, in general, and the French Socialist Party, in particular."
A similar strategy was pursued by the regime in Russia.
Lucrative oil contracts were awarded there to nationalist leader Vladimir Zhirinovsky, the Russian Communist Party, which at the time controlled the largest faction in parliament, and the foreign ministry.
Baghdad also showered with money the well-connected Russian oil and gas oligarchy, including Gazprom, Lukoil, Yukos and other companies, the report said, and worked to establish close cooperative ties with Russian intelligence, the former employer of President Vladimir Putin.
Other recipients mentioned in the report include Indonesian President Megawati Sukarnoputri and Benon Sevan, the former administrator of the oil-for-food program, now under investigation by the United Nations and the US Congress.
The revelations prompted Henry Hyde, the chairman of the House International Relations Committee, to demand immediate access to UN internal audits.
He insisted the access was "imperative if the world body is to escape further damage to its credibility as a result of this grossly mismanaged program."