De Villepin Fights for Political Life Amid Allegations
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PARIS – Engulfed by scandal and fighting to save his job, the French prime minister made an emotional outburst in parliament yesterday, portraying himself as the victim of a “shameful” smear campaign.
Dominique de Villepin made no attempt to conceal his anger and distress as he denied claims that he ordered an intelligence chief to investigate anonymous – and, as it transpired, false – corruption charges against his presidential rival and number two in government, Nicolas Sarkozy.
On the toughest day of his 11-month premiership Mr. de Villepin told the Paris parliament: “Enough is enough.”
Facing the Assemblee Nationale before an emergency cabinet meeting last night, he said: “I have served my country for 30 years. I have been the victim in recent days of a shameful campaign of slander and lies which has deeply shocked and hurt me.”
As opposition Socialist members of parliament chanted “resign,” he insisted that he would not be diverted from “my duties as prime minister in the service of the French people.”
Mr. de Villepin is under pressure over the so-called Clearstream affair, dubbed the “French Watergate,” in which an anonymous whistle-blower alleged without foundation that senior political and business figures took kickbacks from the sale of French frigates to Taiwan in 1991.
The money was allegedly laundered through secret accounts with a Luxembourg-based bank, Clearstream. Individuals were named in anonymous letters and a CD-Rom sent two years ago to an investigating judge, who established that they were bogus.
Mr. de Villepin’s future may depend on the truth of what happened at a meeting in January 2004, when he was foreign secretary, with the intelligence official, General Philippe Rondot. General Rondot reportedly told judges hunting the author of the false allegations that Mr. de Villepin ordered him, on the authority of President Chirac, to investigate Mr. Sarkozy.
Both the prime minister and president deny this, and General Rondot now says he was given no such instruction, suggesting that the judges may have misunderstood his evidence.
The judges have already searched the offices of the defense minister, Michele Alliot-Marie, and there is growing speculation that they may visit Mr. de Villepin’s headquarters, the Matignon.
