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France's President Jacques Chirac declared the Chinese Army's massacre of Tiananmen democracy demonstrators an event in the past as he began a visit here designed to reap lucrative contracts for France's financially pressed state industrial enterprises. The massacre in 1989 was "another time" he said during an interview with the Chinese Government news agency Xinhua, explaining his call for a lifting of the European Union's arms export embargo on China, imposed after Tiananmen. The remark brought immediate protests. The New York-based group Human Rights in China, founded by exiles from the suppressed 1980s democracy movement, said that "15 short years"...

Tuesday, Oct. 5, 2004U.S. Bugs 'Jackass' Chirac's Phone, Book ClaimsThe United States listens in on the phone calls of French President Jacques Chirac and his underlings, a new book alleges. French journalists Henri Vernet and Thomas Cantaloube write in "Chirac contre Bush - l'autre guerre" ("Chirac versus Bush - the other war") that "several military and intelligence sources told them of the American surveillance, which is relatively simple because M Chirac, a compulsive user of mobile and landline phones, rarely uses secure, encrypted lines," the London Times reported today. The Times offered this sorry bit of non-evidence: "The Americans indirectly...