PARIS: France’s former prime minister Dominique de Villepin on Sunday denied any link between arms deals and the deaths of 11 French engineers in a bombing in Pakistan in 2002.
Witnesses have alleged the bombing was revenge for the cancelling of kickbacks paid to officials in the arms deals, in a complex case linked to alleged illegal political funding and implicating President Nicolas Sarkozy.
Villepin said on Sunday: “To my knowledge there is no link” between the cancelled commissions and the bombing and “there is no formal proof of kickbacks” to intermediaries in France as some have claimed. “In the context I do not see that there was a risk,” he said in an interview on television channel.
“One event was in 1995, the other was in 2002, there wasn’t the same Pakistani government nor the same circumstances in Pakistan.” Meanwhile, Sarkozy received a boost from a poll on Sunday showing his popularity rebounding from record lows.
A survey by pollsters Ifo published in the Journal du Dimanche showed his approval rating inching up by 3 percentage points to 32 percent.
