Multilateralism a la Francaise

October 14, 2005
The Wall Street Journal
Original Source:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB112925190894668366.html?mod=opinion_main_review_and_outlooks

In reviewing the career of French diplomat Jean-Bernard Mérimée, two key moments stand out. In June 1995, Mr. Mérimée, then France's ambassador to the U.N., announced he was largely satisfied with the progress Iraq had made on disarmament and wanted sanctions lifted sooner rather than later. And this week, a French investigative magistrate brought Mr. Mérimée in for questioning on an allegation that he took a bribe from Saddam in the form of 11 million barrels of oil.
So now we know what French officialdom means by the word multilateralism: One part involves speechifying about the need for international consensus and legitimacy; a second part involves doing business with dictators and doing their bidding at the U.N. Add to this mix the aggressive pursuit of the commercial interests of certain privileged companies, and you have the soufflé that is the foreign policy of the Fifth Republic.
Mr. Mérimée is far from the only well-connected Frenchman to be caught up in the U.N.'s Oil for Food scandal. Others who have been linked to the oil handouts (while denying any wrongdoing) include Charles Pasqua, a senator and former interior minister; Serge Boidevaix, the former secretary general of the Foreign Ministry; Patrick Maugein, chairman of oil company SOCO who is close to President Jacques Chirac; Michel Grimard, leader of the Christian Movement of the French Fifth Republic -- the list, as they say, is long and distinguished.
Nor is it relegated to individuals only. Charles Duelfer's Iraq Survey Group reported last year that French oil companies Total and Socap obtained a combined 198 million barrels in Iraqi oil vouchers. We have also learned from Paul Volcker's Oil for Food inquiry that Saddam Hussein steered $4.4 billion worth of oil contracts to French companies and $3 billion in humanitarian contracts.
We can expect to learn more about just which French companies profited from Oil for Food when Mr. Volcker's next report is issued sometime later this year. Of particular interest is the role played by French bank BNP-Paribas, which was selected by Iraq to hold the sole escrow account through which Oil for Food monies were handled and which took some $700 million in fees. Congressman Henry Hyde, whose International Relations Committee is investigating U.N. abuses, alleges BNP failed to adequately monitor many of these transactions and may have facilitated improper payments. BNP denies the charges but admits to mistakes in its management of the account.
Whatever the case with BNP, what's clear is that France was not randomly chosen to be the beneficiary of Saddam's largesse. Successive French presidents beginning with Charles de Gaulle have courted Iraq. Saddam himself was quoted by French journalists Claude Angeli and Stéphanie Mesnier as saying: Who did not benefit from these business contracts and relationships with Iraq? … From Mr. Chirac to [former French defense minister] Mr. Chevenement, politicians and economic leaders were in open competition to spend time with us and flatter us.
The remark, made in 1992, was part of a larger complaint that France had joined the coalition in the first Gulf War; Saddam then warned that if this trickery continues, we will be forced to unmask them, all of them, before the French public. Plainly, the warning was both heard and heeded, as France thereafter repeatedly came to Iraq's diplomatic rescue and did its utmost to obstruct the coalition of the willing before the war.
We can't say that any of this comes as a surprise. But it ought to remind the world of two things: First, there was never a chance -- as some liberal fantasists still contend -- that more patient American diplomacy could have succeeded in creating an international consensus to enforce U.N. resolutions on Iraq, much less to depose Saddam. And second, the war in Iraq was not only an act of national liberation but also of international political hygiene. Any lingering doubts that certain French leaders were in need of a shower can now be dispelled.