France To Challenge U.S. MILITARY-INDUSTRIAL Supremacy In Iraq! There's Money To Be Made In That Endless Conflict!
Ralph Waldo
By Edward Cody
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, July 4, 2009
PARIS, July 3 -- France, which was an important weapons supplier to
Saddam Hussein, has set out to revive its once-flourishing arms sales
and training relationship with the new Iraqi government put in place
by the United States.
The effort has attracted attention because, under former president
Jacques Chirac, France opposed the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 and
stayed aloof from the coalition of allies that assisted the United
States during the bloody occupation that has followed.
At stake, specialists here said, are billions of dollars in potential
arms sales and training contracts as the Iraqi military seeks to
rebuild from the devastation wrought by U.N. sanctions and then by
U.S. forces as they took over the country, destroyed Hussein's Sunni-
led military establishment and set up a new order dominated by the
Shiite majority.
The United States, as the principal patron with advisers all around
Baghdad, could be expected to get top priority in military and other
sales as Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's government proceeds with the
reconstruction, some of it financed by U.S. aid money. But French
officials and military specialists said France is counting on a desire
of Iraqi officials to diversify their weapons sources and a network of
personal relationships established in the 1970s when Chirac as prime
minister championed ties with Hussein that continued into the 1980s.
Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, for instance, have been
good customers for French military equipment despite extensive
strategic ties with the United States and a long history of buying
U.S. weaponry. In recent months, France has been pushing hard to sell
the UAE a fleet of 60 Rafale fighter planes, an advanced Dassault
Aviation craft that so far has been bought only by the French
military.
"I think there is indeed a window of opportunity to sell non-American
military equipment," said Jean-Pierre Maulny, a military expert at
France's International and Strategic Relations Institute. "I think the
sentiment [among Iraqi officials] today is to not look like they're in
the hands of the Americans only."
Maliki's government announced Thursday, during a visit by French Prime
Minister François Fillon, that it has concluded a tentative military
sales and training agreement with France. The announcement foresaw
Iraqi visits to France and French experts training Iraqis. But it did
not describe the extent of sales envisioned, the timetable or the
equipment the Iraqi military would consider shopping for in France.
"The governments of Iraq and France . . . are looking forward to
boosting a brilliant and permanent bilateral relationship and a desire
from both sides to develop bilateral cooperation particularly in the
arms field," the accord said.
So far, the French military sales effort has resulted in a $500
million deal for 24 Eurocopter EC-635 light transport and
reconnaissance helicopters. Next, according to reports in Paris, the
French Defense Ministry has proposed selling -- and the Iraqi Defense
Ministry has shown interest in acquiring -- 18 modernized Mirage F1
warplanes and another batch of military helicopters.
In announcing the helicopter sales in March, Defense Minister Hervé
Morin said a French military attache would be stationed at the embassy
in Baghdad beginning this summer to foster more military sales and
training programs. "We want to return to the relations that France had
until the 1980s, when a large part of the Iraqi army was trained in
France and equipped with French military equipment," Morin added.
The Obama administration has not taken a public stand on the proposed
French military sales. But U.S. relations with France have warmed
considerably since the advent of President Obama, who opposed the Bush
administration's Iraq war, and Washington has stressed the need for
Maliki's government to assume sovereignty over the country as U.S.
troops draw down.
In addition, President Nicolas Sarkozy has emphasized friendship with
the United States. In that light, he has increased to 3,000 the number
of French soldiers in Afghanistan and returned France to NATO's
integrated military command.
Moreover, the French military sales campaign is only one part of a
broad pitch that includes proposals for large-scale civilian sales and
French investment in Iraq's long-delayed reconstruction. These are
goals advocated by U.S. officials as a way to get Iraq on its feet
again.
Sarkozy visited Baghdad in February to promote French businesses;
Maliki was received here in May. Fillon followed up with his one-day
visit on Thursday, bringing along a team of senior French business
leaders, including Christophe de Margerie of the French oil giant
Total.
Whatever the desire of Iraqi officials to buy French equipment, the
military's ability to absorb, maintain and operate modern weaponry
remains limited, said François Heisbourg, of the Foundation for
Strategic Research in Paris. Any sales contract would probably have to
include provisions for training and long-term maintenance, he said.
[Special correspondent Zaid Sabah in Baghdad contributed to this
report.]
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/03/AR2009070302795.html