Facts on How France Benefits From
Keeping Saddam Hussein In Power
 By: The Heritage Foundation Web Memo #2, 17 February 28, 2003
(http://www.heritage.org/Research/Features/images/icon_print.gif)

According to the CIA World Factbook, France controls over 22.5 percent of Iraq's imports.

French total trade with Iraq under the oil-for-food program is the third largest, totaling $3.1 billion since 1996, according to the United Nations.

In 2001 France became Iraq's largest European trading partner. Roughly 60 French companies do an estimated $1.5 billion in trade with Baghdad annually under the U.N. oil-for-food program.

France's largest oil company, Total Fina Elf, has negotiated a deal to
develop the Majnoon field in western Iraq. The Majnoon field purportedly contains up to 30 billion barrels of oil.

Total Fina Elf also negotiated a deal for future oil exploration in Iraq's Nahr Umar field. Both the Majnoon and Nahr Umar fields are estimated to contain as much as 25 percent of the country's reserves.

France's Alcatel company, a major telecom firm, is negotiating a $76 million contract to rehabilitate Iraq's telephone system.

In 2001, French carmaker Renault SA sold $75 million worth of farming equipment to Iraq

More objections have been lodged against French export contracts with Iraq than any other exporting country under the oil-for-food program, according to a report published by the London Times. In addition, French companies have signed contracts with Iraq worth more than $150 million that are suspected of being linked to its military operations.

Some of the goods offered by French companies to Iraq, detailed by UN documents, include refrigerated trucks that can be used as storage facilities and mobile laboratories for biological weapons. Iraq owes France an estimated $6 billion in foreign debt accrued from arms sales in the 1970s and ‘80s.

From 1981 to 2001, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), France was responsible for over 13 percent of Iraq's arms imports.

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