Friends in Need?

IN late 1974, Jacques Chirac, then prime minister of France, traveled to Baghdad to meet Iraqi vice president Saddam Hussein. The two men discussed Iraq’s purchase of French nuclear reactors. The next year, Saddam traveled to Paris; Chirac gave his visitor a personal tour of a French nuclear plant, and declared that “Iraq is in the process of beginning a coherent nuclear program and France wants to associate herself with that effort.” Coherent it was: Saddam subsequently told an Iraqi magazine that working with France was crucial “toward production of the Arab atomic bomb.”

The French sold Iraq two nuclear reactors and agreed to train 600 Iraqi nuclear technicians and scientists. Paris also agreed to sell Iraq $1.5 billion worth of weapons, including Mirage Fl fighters, surface-to-air missiles, and advanced electronics and air-defense systems. Chirac called Saddam “a personal friend and a great statesman”; Saddam began selling France Iraqi oil on favorable terms; and thus the stage was set for a great Security Council showdown a quarter-century later.