Sarkozy’s party dismisses claim DSK was ‘set up’

FRENCH President Nicolas Sarkozy’s party has rejected as “grotesque” suggestions that Dominique Strauss-Kahn was the victim of a plot to ruin his presidential ambitions.

“This story is ridiculous... this plot argument is grotesque,” said UMP party leader Jean-Francois Cope, while interior minister Claude Gueant dismissed the allegations as “pure fantasy”.

The remarks came after an article in the New York Review of Books that included hints by associates of the disgraced ex-International Monetary Fund chief that his arrest on sexual assault charges in New York on May 14 might have been a set-up.