Official communiqué: France revives Agosta ghosts

Paris currently looking into different aspects of the Karachi bombing of 2002.

ISLAMABAD: As French President Nicolas Sarkozy plans his 2011 visit to Pakistan, Paris has informed Islamabad that it has reopened several inquiries into different aspects of the May 2002 attack, which left 11 French engineers dead.

A highly-placed source told The Express Tribune on condition of anonymity that Pakistan has recently received a communiqué by the chief of staff of the presidency of the French republic.

“A number of inquiries have been opened and [we] are currently looking into the different aspects of the Karachi bombing on May 8, 2002, during which 11 French nationals lost their lives,’’ the communiqué said.

“The confusion of issues does not make for the calm required for the judicial debate. In this matter, President Sarkozy’s sole concern is to find the truth owed to the victims families who have been waiting for over eight years to discover the exact circumstances of this tragic attack,” it added.

A French judge, investigating corruption charges, confirmed that illegal commissions were paid for the sale of submarines to Pakistan in 1995.

“The duty to find the truth, to which everyone needs to contribute in this painful affair, should not, however, encourage the most fanciful  interpretations,” the communiqué said.

“In particular, it is unacceptable for this tragedy to be used as an opportunist argument to feed into the strategy of those whose only concern is to implicate the head of the state, through [a] string of insinuation, in an affair that has nothing to do with him,” the statement added.

“It is up to the judiciary to determine the exact cause of this tragedy, in total independence and with all the necessary resources. These investigations should be conducted calmly and with the full cooperation of the authorities,” the statement said.

The statement said that no obstacle has been placed in the way of finding the truth in this affair. “The inquiry started on the very day of the bomb attack and has been following its due course since.”

The communiqué said that the judiciary has asked for certain classified documents to be produced at various stages in its investigations and the documents have been declassified and handed over. This information, the communiqué added, has been placed in the case file and is therefore available to all parties and subject to open debate.

The communiqué also defended the French president against suggestions of alleged involvement in the affair. “Unceremonious accusations that the terms of the Agosta defence contract with Pakistan gave rise to illegal contribution to the funding of the presidential campaign of the then prime minister are nothing more than malicious gossip.”

Further, the statement said, Sarkozy was never the director or treasurer of [then prime minister] Edouard Balladur’s campaign, he was just his spokesperson. Also, when he [Sarkozy] was minister for the budget, he was never in a position to approve commissions on export contracts. Moreover, negotiations on the defence contracts in question started well before Sarkozy became the minister, the communiqué concluded.

Published in The Express Tribune December 14^th, 2010.