http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,81079,00.htmlThis is a partial transcript of Special Report with Brit Hume, March 12, that has been edited for clarity.
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BRIT HUME, HOST: Despite its record of seeming solicitude for Saddam Hussein's regime, France has never gone as far out on a limb for the Iraqi dictator as it appears to have done this time.
For more on the reasons why, we turn to FOX News contributor Marc Ginsberg, former U.S. ambassador to Morocco, and the man who's advised presidents on the Mideast going back 25 years and more.
Marc, welcome; nice to have you.
MARC GINSBERG, FMR. U.S. AMBASSADOR, MOROCCO: Thanks Brit.
HUME: How much does this relationship between Iraq and France have to do with Jacques Chirac himself? I remember covering the first President Bush, Francoise Mitterand was the president of France, and he gave that Bush administration some trouble. But it wasn't like this.
GINSBERG: Brit, this is an odd couple relationship. It goes back to 1974 when Chirac, the youngest Prime Minister in France under then, Valery Giscard d'Estaing, the president went to Baghdad on his debutant diplomatic trip into the Middle East. His first stop was Baghdad and that is where he and Saddam developed a personal relationship that now has spanned a period of almost three decades.
HUME: Now, personal relationships alone probably would not account for policy at this level being so strikingly favorable, at least compared to much of the rest of the world anyway, to Baghdad. I've heard all these stories about business relationships and I always thought well, maybe that's a factor. How big a factor?
GINSBERG: It is significant a factor. It doesn't explain the whole story, Brit. But, essentially, when you look at the numbers and understand the history here, ever since 1967 when Charles de Gaulle invested a strategic partnership with Israel, and then when Israel essentially went to war and against de Gaulle 's wishes, the French invested in Iraq as their next strategic partner. From the period of time that when Chirac helped organize the sale of two nuclear reactors to Saddam, Saddam went to Paris, by the way, to visit his nuclear reactors as well as France training...
HUME: You mean when they were being built?
GINSBERG: Right, when they were being built. One of those nuclear reactors were taken out by Israel in 1981.
The amount of trade in military hardware alone between France and Iraq totaled $25 billion. Yet France essentially provided most of Iraq's air force, as well as military equipment. Since sanctions were imposed, that was an additional $3.5 billion ...
HUME: Since sanctions were imposed?
GINSBERG: Since sanctions were imposed, $3.5 billion, and just in the year 2001 alone, that number now of trade of $650 million made France the largest trading partner with Iraq.
HUME: Now, the French obviously have you know, more at stake in this, of course, the business, Chirac's personal relationship. It's been speculated by people that even at this late hour, that France might come around. Do you see any way that's possible at this stage?
GINSBERG: Chirac is gambling with the future of his relationship with the United States. And it is quite clear that as a man who actually believes that providence has designated him as the next intermediary between the Muslim world and the Anglo Saxon world, he actually believes that war is the worst-case scenario. But given when you get below the surface and you look at not only the way in which Chirac is operating, but what France has at stake, a 20 percent Muslim population, its investment in France, its utilization...
HUME: Twenty percent?
GINSBERG: Twenty percent.
HUME: I thought it was more like 10 percent.
GINSBERG: Twenty percent of its population is Muslim. When you look at the amount of money that French oil companies have at stake in Iraq, when you look at the long-term investment in the relationship, it is not just Chirac, it goes throughout the French political establishment where the relationship between France and Saddam has been a core relationship of its ties in the Middle East. It says a great deal of why France believes that we are picking on its number one client state in the region.
HUME: Now France, of course, is -- I've heard the relationship with France and Saudi -- France and Iraq likened to the U.S. relationship with Saudi Arabia. Is that a fair comparison?
GINSBERG: Yes, in some respects it is. When you look at the commitment that indeed the French have made to lift sanctions, to provide military equipment, to condemn countries that have stood in the way. Look, a French parliamentary delegation went to Iraq just a few years ago and called sanctions a creeping genocide of the Iraqi people.
There is a clear investment of a bilateral tie where the French, political and business establishment has invested heavily in its future with Saddam. Removing Saddam is a threat to all of these ties.
HUME: All right.
GINSBERG: And that is one of the concerns that I think that many of us have about this particular predicament that we find with Chirac right now.
HUME: But here was France only months ago with -- involved deeply in the drafting of U.N. Resolution 1441, which was, when it was finally passed unanimously, quite a tough document. I mean, the French were saying today they don't believe in ultimatums. But, that was an ultimatum. It was disarm now or else face serious consequences. It called - it used the word "immediate," it was very strong. How to account for that?
GINSBERG: I think it could come down, and this is just my own opinion, Brit. I think in the end, where this got complicated and where the French decided to make a total retreat from 1441 is because they thought that they could get Iraq to disarm without regime change.
The minute the United States began inserting regime change as the overall objective, and that is in effect the ending of Saddam's relationship over his ties, his control over Iraq. That's when I think when the French decided this is going too far because, removing Saddam undermines the entire investment that the French have started since 1974. Had we stuck clearly and only to disarmament, perhaps maybe the French would have stayed with us.
HUME: All right, Marc Ginsberg, good to have you, sir. Thank you very much.
GINSBERG: Thank you Brit.
