WASHINGTON, May 6: France secretly supplied passports to Iraqi officials fleeing US troops after the fall of Saddam Hussein, allowing them to escape to Europe, the Washington Times said on Tuesday, citing unnamed US officials.
The French embassy denied the report, calling it false.
US Secretary of State Colin Powell said he would look into the report, but appeared to downplay the story’s credibility.
The Times said US officials were angry after learning through sensitive intelligence means that French officials in Syria gave passports to an unknown number of Saddam’s allies.
“It made it very difficult to track these people,” one official told the Times.
“It’s like Raoul Wallenberg in reverse,” said a second official, referring to the Swedish diplomat who helped Jews escape Nazi persecution during World War II by giving them travel documents. “Now you have the French helping the bad guys escape us.”
In his reaction to the story, Mr Powell said: “It’s one press report and I have just started my day and I have not looked into it.”
“I don’t know the source. I don’t know if it’s accurate or not,” he said after meeting Polish Foreign Minister Wlodzimierz Cimoszewicz.
Mr Powell replied “Yeah” when asked whether he planned to look into the matter, but said he had not yet spoken to any French officials about the report.
At the White House, spokesman Ari Fleischer said he could not confirm the report but added a cryptic “I think the French will have to explain what they did or did not do.” —AFP
