French confusion over Libyan talks

Two top French ministers publicly disagreed today on whether Paris had prior knowledge of secret British and American diplomacy that prompted Libya’s pledge to renounce weapons of mass destruction.

“We were not kept informed,” Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin told France-Inter radio.

While there is an “extremely active and fertile cooperation” between France, Britain and the United States in combating terrorism and proliferation of banned weapons, de Villepin said that the talks with Libya were ”conducted in absolute secrecy.”

The comments came a day after the defence minister said precisely the opposite.

Michele Alliot-Marie said in a TV interview that France was “perfectly informed of the negotiations … by the Americans several months ago.”

Alliot-Marie sought to downplay the apparent discrepancy, suggesting that perhaps the foreign ministry was out of the loop.

“Dominique de Villepin was not informed in detail of the contents of the accord,” Alliot-Marie said after a Cabinet meeting.

Using diplomatic nuance to try to patch over the discrepancies between two heavyweight ministries, government spokesman Jean-Francois Cope said that ”as everyone knows, the negotiations had a secret character.”

France, meanwhile, continues to look for a compensation accord with Libya over the 1989 bombing of a French airliner that killed 170 people.

De Villepin said he had “great hopes” that an accord would be concluded in the next few weeks with Tripoli.

A group of victims’ families is handling the French side of the talks with the backing of Paris.