PARIS, July 29: French President Jacques Chirac is at last beginning to see the benefits of his decision, taken in May, to increase the level of French role in the US-led “war against terrorism”.

The collaboration has often been stormy as Mr Chirac, in true Gaullist fashion, has systematically demanded that if France is to play a useful role in the “war”, it is to do so on its own terms.

The demand was made especially “loud and clear” during President George W Bush’s visit to Paris on May 26th, less than three weeks following Mr Chirac’s landslide reelection victory against extremist National Front leader Jean-Marie Le Pen.

As a result of that meeting, US and British intelligence operatives have been accorded an access characterised as “wide-ranging” to French intelligence files — housed in the Boulevard Mortier headquarters of the French Direction generale de la Securite exterieure (DGSE, the French CIA) — which are considered to be unique with regard to intelligence concerning the activities of terrorist networks operating in Afghanistan, a country where the French secret services had already long established their presence — and their preeminence — several years before the arrival of the CIA or MI5.

At the time, France had chosen to accord its support to Commander Masood, providing him with French intelligence advisers, indeed agreeing to form his own intelligence operatives at a special French camp, operated by the DGSE at Cercottes in the Loiret department. It is that French intelligence superiority which Mr Chirac has parlayed today into a special role for the French secret services.

The revelation comes from French defence sources who note that France’s decision to backtrack on its former go-it-alone attitude on intelligence-gathering is “finally beginning to pay off,” in the words of the sources, as France has been effectively accorded what he characterises as a “front-line” responsibility in Pakistan.

The sources note that Messers Chirac and Bush put in a call to General Musharraf to seek his position on the possibility of a stepped-up role for the French secret services in Pakistan. Already, through his foreign minister, Dominique de Villepin, Mr Chirac lost no time in letting it be known that as a result of the terrorist killing May 8th of eleven French defence employees in Karachi, France wanted a greater foreign policy role to play with regard to Pakistan, notably as concerns its conflict with India.

What concrete form that responsibility will now take is scheduled to be one of the principal subjects of discussion next weekend as French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin, accompanied by representatives of the French secret services — notably the DGSE, as well as the Direction de la surveillance du territoire (DST, France’s version of the FBI) — arrives in Islamabad to meet with Pakistani authorities also engaged in the US-led war on terrorism.

The French intelligence sources have revealed that DGSE director Jean-Claude Cousseran — who has just been confirmed in his position at the personal request of President Chirac, who is said to appreciate the man’s professionalism and above all his discretion — was himself recently in Pakistan, and notably in Karachi, to assess the potential weaknesses of the French intelligence presence in Pakistan, especially in light of the May 8th terrorist attack on the French naval employees working under contract to the Pakistani Navy.

He is also known to have told President Chirac, upon his return to Paris, that he was “deeply concerned,” according to the sources, “that the Pakistani secret services, the ISI, appeared in his estimation to be under the influence of Islamic extremist networks considered to be close to Al Qaeda.”

Mr de Villepin and the French secret services representatives are also expected to evoke the future of the Franco-Pakistani defence relationship, which for the moment has been limited to the construction of three Agosta-90B submarines pursuant to a 1994 defence accord between the two countries.

And, although calls have been made both by a major trade union and in the French National Assembly for France to reduce its defence profile in Pakistan, it has been understood that Mr Chirac wants France to increase its defence presence in Pakistan, opening up the possibility for further joint ventures between the two countries.

One possibility being evoked is the joint construction by France and Pakistan of the very same stealth frigates that have just been built for the Saudi Arabian Navy, the first apparently to have been designed and built almost entirely by computer.