French Official Wants 'Lies' to Stop
By KIM HOUSEGO The Associated PressFriday, May 16, 2003; 8:43 AM
PARIS - Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin said in an interview aired Friday that France wants "lies and calumny" published in both the U.S. and British press to stop.
To that end, Paris is taking an inventory of press accounts about France with plans to show they are untrue, de Villepin said in a France Inter radio interview taped Thursday night and aired Friday.
De Villepin stepped forward to personally address what France claims is a campaign of disinformation against it, revealed to U.S. officials this week in a letter from France's ambassador to Washington.
The letter by Ambassador Jean-David Levitte was sent to officials of the Bush administration and members of Congress. It was meant "to open up to them about the difficulties we are encountering and ... so that such lies and calumny stop," the minister said.
However, de Villepin broadened the charge, saying the British media, too, had carried disinformation.
