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Geneva – With the war in Iraq ending in American victory, French President Jacques Chirac swallowed his pride and phoned President Bush this week, after two months of cold detachment. Washington termed the exchange as «business as usual» and Paris as «very good.»

After months of moving heaven and earth to keep the butcher of Baghdad in power, now the French understandably fear that they might be left out of the scene in post-Saddam Hussein Iraq. The Bush administration should confirm those French fears.
The Iraqi-French connection is as legendary as it is appalling. «Under Chirac,» wrote Andrew Neil in London’s Daily Mail, ‘French policy toward Iraq has become a witches’ brew of duplicity, hypocrisy, ruthless self-interest and immorality.»

In 1975, then Iraqi Vice President Hussein traveled to Paris procuring nuclear technology. Then Prime Minister Chirac gave him a personally guided tour of a French nuclear plant. France agreed to sell two reactors to Iraq and to train 600 nuclear scientists and technicians. It also agreed to sell enriched, weapons-grade uranium (93 percent), even though a safer grade was available.

British Parliamentarian Jack Cunningham noted a short time ago that, Iraq being a country awash in oil, Chirac must have known that the reactors and uranium would be used to produce something else than electricity. Hussein later called this deal a «concrete step toward the production of an Arab nuclear bomb.»

In 1981, Israeli pilots bombed the Osiraq reactor before it would become operationally nuclear. Chirac called that Israeli action «unacceptable.» Over the years, France sold Iraq weapons, Mirage fighter planes, air-defense systems and surface-to-air missiles worth billions. This would eventually make riskier the coalition forces’ military intervention during Gulf War I.

Chirac and Hussein developed a close personal relationship, and the French leader was eloquent about it. Chirac said that he was «truly fascinated» by Hussein and called the Iraqi dictator a «personal friend» and a man for whom he had «esteem and affection — a great statesman whose qualities will lead his people toward progress and national prosperity.» Additionally, the European press has speculated that Hussein financed part of Chirac’s 1977 Parisian mayoral campaign.

Chirac became president in 1995 and was reelected last year. According to media reports, he assumed personal charge of France’s Iraq policy, set up a special «policy cell» within his office and secretly dispatched a personal emissary to Baghdad. That envoy was so welcome by Hussein that reportedly he even sat in on many cabinet meetings in Iraq. Chirac’s relations with Iraq prompted jokes in the Middle East.

French policy on Iraq goes beyond the personal rapport that Chirac cultivated with Hussein. France has a lot to lose from this war of liberation and deterrence; that’s why it opposed it as much as it possibly could. Anti-war demonstrators have claimed that this war was about oil. If there is any truth to that, it might apply to France’s interests more than America’s.

France chose the wrong side in this war. Now it must be held accountable for it. It must be made to understand that siding with dictators and terrorists does not pay. And if to make that lesson clear, Americans should return the Statue of Liberty to the French — who seem to have forgotten its symbolism (as Sydney’s Sunday Telegraph ironically suggested) — so be it.

Julián Schvindlerman, a political analyst, is author of Land for Peace, Land for War and a member of the American Jewish Committee.