French President Nicolas Sarkozy (L) accompanies former French Ecology Minister Jean-Louis Borloo as he leaves after a lunch at the Elysee Palace in Paris November 18, 2010.
Credit: Reuters/Philippe Wojazer
Pakistani Agosta 90B
Posted on 11/18/2010 10:18:52 AM PST by sukhoi-30mki
Sarkozy is asked to explain Pakistan bomb mystery
By Thierry Leveque
PARIS | Thu Nov 18, 2010 9:30pm IST
PARIS (Reuters) - Victims' families on Thursday demanded that President Nicolas Sarkozy be called for questioning about a 2002 bomb attack in Pakistan that killed 11 French people.
A new line of inquiry into the bombing has brought up possible links to a murky affair of commissions paid for a Pakistani submarine order when Sarkozy was budget minister.
Presidential immunity means Sarkozy can refuse to be questioned while in office, and he has already publicly dismissed any link between the attack and political corruption.
But other politicians of the mid-1990s might have to testify in an affair that has already been seized on by media, making life uncomfortable for a president grappling with some of the lowest ratings of any recent French leader, with 18 months left until a presidential election.
The suicide attack in Karachi killed 11 French engineers and technicians who were working on Agosta submarines that France sold to Pakistan under a contract signed in the mid-1990s.
The attack was initially blamed on Islamic fundamentalists, but information that surfaced in 2008 has led investigators to ask whether it could have been a reprisal for an order by then-president Jacques Chirac to stop paying the commissions.
Sarkozy was budget minister when the contract was signed and a complex system set up to pay the commissions via Luxembourg.
"After abandoning us, you forget about us, and now the time has come to provide an explanation," Sandrine Leclerc, daughter of one of the victims, said in comments directed at Sarkozy.
At a news conference, the families also urged the inquiry to summon Chirac and Dominique de Villepin, who was Chirac's top aide and then a prime minister under him.
(Excerpt) Read more at in.reuters.com ...
French President Nicolas Sarkozy (L) accompanies former French Ecology Minister Jean-Louis Borloo as he leaves after a lunch at the Elysee Palace in Paris November 18, 2010.
Credit: Reuters/Philippe Wojazer
Pakistani Agosta 90B
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