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Saddam `bought' French, Russian politicians

The Iraqi government of Saddam Hussein paid millions of dollars in lucrative oil export vouchers to leading French, Russian and other foreign politicians as part of a concerted effort to buy their assistance in lifting UN sanctions against Iraq, according to a CIA report made public in the US.

While the Iraqi intelligence service tried to bribe many foreign nationals, it paid particular attention to influential personalities from France and Russia because the two countries hold permanent seats on the UN Security Council, said the paper, prepared by chief US weapons inspector Charles Duelfer, who has spent months perusing secret Iraqi documents seized in the wake of the US-led invasion of Iraq.

"Iraq sought out individuals whom they believed were in a position to influence French policy," Duelfer concluded. "Saddam authorized lucrative oil contracts be granted to such parties, businesses and individuals."

The French targets, according to the CIA, included government ministers, politicians, journalists and businesspeople.

Among the recipients named in Iraqi intelligence 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, said the CIA report made public Wednesday.

The Saddam Hussein government also tried to find a way to influence President Jacques Chirac by making payments to businessman Patrick Maugein, whom the Iraqis believed had access to the French leader.

As a result, Maugein's Dutch-registered trading company was given export vouchers for 13 million barrels of oil, according to the report.

The founder of the French-Iraqi Export Club, Michel Grimard, received 5.5 million barrels through Swiss companies and the Iraqi-French Friendship Society, which, in turn, got vouchers for 10 million barrels of oil.

French oil companies Total and SOCAP were awarded over 105 million and 93 million barrels respectively, the report said.

In all, as of June 2000, Iraq awarded France US$1.78 billion worth of short-term oil contracts, equaling approximately 15 percent of the oil contracts allocated under the oil-for-food program, the CIA pointed out.

The transactions were executed under the UN-run US$60 billion 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 payoffs were personally supervised by Iraqi deputy prime minister Tariq Aziz, who is currently in US custody in Baghdad.
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