Chirac Declares Hezbollah NOT Terrorist Organization!

French President Jacques Chirac on Monday turned down a request from Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom to support placing Hezbollah on the EU's list of terrorist organizations, despite growing suspicions that the Syrian-backed terrorist group was responsible for the assassination of former Lebanese leader Rafik Hariri in Beirut on Monday and evidence that the group is trying to torpedo the ceasefire efforts of Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas.

France's objections are considered the main obstacle to an EU move to add Hezbollah to the list and were defended by Chirac in his afternoon meeting with Shalom even as the news broke of Hairi's death in the massive explosion that rocked the Lebanese capital shortly after noon.

According to Chirac, French efforts will be focused primarily on the democratic process in Lebanon and the upcoming May elections. But the death of Hariri who served as prime minister for well over a decade before resigning in October has thrown the whole electoral process into turmoil.

This is some of what Bill Gertz had to say about the French in his excellent book Treachery:

Chirac helped sell to Saddam the two nuclear reactors that started Baghdad on the path to nuclear weapons. Chirac was so involved in Iraq’s first nuclear reactor, named Osirak, that those opposed to the sale referred to the reactor as “O-Chirac.”

John Shaw, the Deputy undersecretary of defense for international technology security lived for a time in Paris and told Gertz it was well known in France that Chirac “has been kind of in a godfather relationship with Saddam” back to when France jump-started Iraq’s nuclear program. Shaw said it was accepted face in France that Chirac was getting financial help for his various political campaigns from Baghdad. The Army and Defense Department investigators had discovered that France was one of the largest weapons sellers to Iraq and that tons of armaments were st ill in bunkers spread out in the Iraqi desert.

US intelligence agencies were under fire over questions about pre-war estimates of Iraq’s stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction. But intelligence on Iraq’s hidden procurement networks was confirmed. An initial accounting by the Pentagon in the months after the fall of Baghdad revealed that Saddam had acquired between 650,000 and 1 million tons of foreign conventional weapons covertly. The main supplies were Russia, China and France. By contrast, the US arsenal is between 1.6 and 1.8M tons.

By 2003, Iraq owed France $4 billion for arms sales. It was the massive debt that was one reason France was reluctant to military operations.

France has denied they knowingly permitted the arms sales. However, France’s government tightly controls its aerospace and defense firms, so it would be difficult to believe the transfers took place without their knowledge. Iraq’s Mirage F-1 was made by France’s Dassault Aviation. Gazelle attack helicopters were made by Aerospatiale, which later became part of a consortium of European defense companies.

Sen. Ted Stevens, Alaska Republican and chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee said that France’s selling military equipment was “international treason.” Congressman Weldon said the French were less trustworthy than the Russians.

In March 2003, US intelligence and defense officials confirmed that exporters in France had conspired with China to provide Iraq with chemicals used in making solid fuel for long range missiles. The sanctions bursting operation occurred in 8/02 as the US National Security Agency discovered through electronic intercepts.

The chemical l transferred to Iraq was a transparent liquid rubber called hydroxyl terminated polybutadiene, or HTPD. A French companies known as CIS Paris helped broker the sale of 20 tons of HTPD which was shipped from China to the Syrian port of Tartus and then sent by truck from Syria into Iraqi to a missile manufacturing plant.

Military intelligence teams found stacks of blank French passports that only confirmed what US intelligence already believed – that the French had helped Iraqi war criminals escape from coalition forces and thereafter escape justice.

Brand new French missiles were showing up in the hands of Saddam loyalists MONTHS after the fall of Baghdad. Officials in the State Department and CIA shielded Paris and offered implausible explanations that French companies had often made deals without the government’s knowledge or support.

On 4/24/03, Saddam’s deputy prime minister, Tariq Aziz, gave himself up to US authorities. He told interrogators that Saddam had misjudged the US because the French and Russian government had assured him that in late 2002 and early 2003 that the US would not attack. And they assured him that if we did try to attack, Paris and Moscow would take steps within the UN Security Council to block the war.

In 2003, US export control officials investigated a French company for supplying Iran with four specialty pumps made in the US. The dual use pumps, described as cryogenic fluid transfer pumps, were sold illegally and could be used as part of the cooling system for Iran’s nuclear reactors, which can be used to produce weapons grade materials.

In the early 90’s, US intelligence agencies became wary of French intelligence because the French spy services were conducting aggressive operating against visiting US officials and businessmen. French intelligence electronically intercepted phone calls, planted electronic listening devices in hotel rooms, broke into visitor’s hotel rooms and searched luggage and portable computers. The French have completely wired most hotels.

The French specifically targeted the following US firms: Allied Signal, Bell, Boeing, Ford Aerospace, General Dynamics, GTE, Honeywell, Hughes Aircraft, Lockheed, Los Alamos, McDonnell Douglas, NASA Space Centers, Northrop, Pratt and Whitney, Texas Instruments, United Technologies and Westinghouse, among others.

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