Anti-Frog

Former French minister Charles Pasqua says he has been falsely named in the Iraq oil scandal as part of a US bid to discredit President Jacques Chirac.

Mr Pasqua told French TV that US senators who accused him of receiving oil rights from Saddam Hussein were gripped by an anti-French obsession.

He said the US was convinced that France had opposed the war in Iraq out of economic self-interest.

Mr Pasqua said he had not been contacted by the US Senate inquiry.

Mr Pasqua, who was interior minister in the 1980s and 1990s, said it seemed "obvious" to him that the allegations against him were an attempt to tarnish Mr Chirac.

However, the effort was bound to fail, he added.

"Perhaps also those who are targeting Jacques Chirac through me ignore that the nature of our relationship has changed, at least politically, and they are mistaken if they think that I am in a position to influence French policy," he said.

He said there was "a real obsession" in the US - "an obsession which consists of saying that if France took a hostile stance against American intervention in Iraq, it was because of economic interests or privileged relations it might have had with Saddam Hussein."

Is America OCD with certain things...?