Strauss-Kahn to meet with rape accuser

FRENCH prosecutors will set up a face-to-face meeting between former IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn and the young French writer who has accused him of attempted rape, they said yesterday.

Tristane Banon alleges the 62-year-old Socialist politician locked her in a bare Paris flat in 2003 and assaulted her. He has admitted making “an advance” on the 32-year-old author, but denies any use of violence.

“In the Banon-DSK matter the Paris prosecutor’s office has decided to arrange a confrontation between Tristane Banon and Dominique Strauss-Kahn,” said the prosecution, which has yet to decide whether to pursue charges.

Both parties have been interviewed by police over the alleged incident, and Banon told a television interviewer this week that she was keen to confront her alleged abuser in front of police investigators to test each other’s claims.

“The police unit asked me whether I was prepared to accept a confrontation. Obviously, I said: ‘Yes’. I want him in front of me so he can look into my eyes and say to my face that I imagined it,” Banon said.

Strauss-Kahn has lodged a lawsuit for slander against Banon over her claim, but yesterday the former government minister’s lawyers said he “had let the service in charge of this case know that he was at its disposal.”

Already a notorious womaniser, Strauss-Kahn’s career as managing director of the International Monetary Fund came crashing to an end in May when a New York hotel chambermaid accused him of sexual assault and he was arrested.

The case dashed his hopes of winning the French Socialist Party’s nomination to run for president next year, but his multimillionaire heiress wife stood by him and paid for a luxury Manhattan townhouse during his house arrest.

The New York prosecutor’s case collapsed last month after doubts emerged over the credibility of his accuser, Guinean immigrant Nafissatou Diallo, and the man the French call “DSK” made a triumphant return to Paris.