French Emabassador: Halliburton had hand in Oil for food cookie jar

French Emabassador: Halliburton had hand in Oil for food cookie jar

...France fully supports the independent inquiry set up by the U.N. The truth must come out. Was France a major beneficiary of oil-for-food contracts, as several conservative columnists have claimed recently? Definitely not. From the beginning of the program to its end, French contracts accounted for 8% of the total. We were Iraq's eighth-largest supplier. In addition, throughout the program a sizable proportion of the contracts dubbed "French" were in fact contracts from foreign companies using their

French branches, subsidiaries and agents. Among them were U.S. firms providing spare parts for the oil industry (including several subsidiaries of Halliburton). They submitted contracts through French subsidiaries for more than $200 million. It is also suggested that the money from the oil-for-food contracts passed exclusively through a French bank, BNP Paribas. Wrong again: 41% of the money passed through J.P. Morgan Chase Bank, which, like BNP, was contracted by the U.N. with the approval of Security Council members.

This leaves us with one remaining accusation: that the French positions on the oil-for-food program and Iraq in general were driven by the lure of oil. Yet France was never a major destination for Iraqi oil during the program. In 2001, 8% of Iraqi oil was imported by France, compared with 44.5% imported by the U.S., which was the No. 1 importer all along.