Stardate 20030709.2107

(On Screen): Every time I think we've plumbed the depths of Chirac's perfidy, he manages to surprise me. At the Milosevic warcrimes trial, a transcript of a telephone call has been introduced into evidence.

French President Jacques Chirac allegedly guaranteed that Bosnian Serb Gen. Ratko Mladic would not be transferred to the U.N. war crimes tribunal in exchange for the release of two French hostages in 1995, according to evidence presented at Slobodan Milosevic's trial Wednesday.

Chirac's office issued a firm denial of any negotiations to release the French pilots being held by the Bosnian Serb army in the eastern Bosnian enclave of Srebrenica.

"There were no negotiations for the liberation of these two pilots," presidential spokeswoman Catherine Colonna said. "These allegations have no relation to reality."

Mladic is one of the court's top two fugitives, along with wartime Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic.

Milosevic read out parts of a transcript from a telephone conversation between Zoran Lilic, Milosevic's predecessor as president of Yugoslavia, and the army chief of staff, Gen. Momcilo Perisic. It was provided to U.N. prosecutors by an unspecified foreign intelligence service.

From the witness stand, Lilic confirmed the authenticity of the transcript, and said Chirac had gone along with the Yugoslav proposal to protect Mladic, then the head of the Bosnian Serb army, from the court.

In the December 1995 conversation, Lilic and Perisic agreed to write Mladic a guarantee that they wouldn't surrender him to the court in The Hague, and referred to similar promises Chirac had allegedly given earlier.

"I'll write this letter with the head of the FRY (Federal Republic of Yugoslavia) to guarantee him (Mladic) he will not be delivered to anyone from the tribunal. He has got the guarantee by Chirac and Slobodan (Milosevic)," the transcript quoted Lilic as saying.

Chirac has denied it. Of course, he'd deny it whether the report was true or not true, so we learn nothing from the denial. At this point I'm not willing to grant him the benefit of the doubt; I think this report is indeed true.

But even if it's false, it does Chirac no credit. The alternative explanation is that Lilic fabricated the offer by Chirac, but that in turn would mean that Lilic thought that such a fabrication would ring true to those he was lying to. In other words, either this evidence indicates that Chirac was willing to make this deal, or it indicates that he had a reputation in Yugoslavia such that it was plausible that he might make such a deal.

Imagine, if you will, someone fabricating a similar lie and trying to claim that Maggie Thatcher had been willing to make such a deal; no one would have believed it. If this was actually a lie by Lilic (or someone else and he too was fooled by it) then the only reason Chirac was the subject of the lie is that he was already thought to be that kind of man.

You don't lie and say someone is a skunk unless everyone already knows that he stinks.

But I don't think it was a lie. I think it actually did happen, and if so it increases his hypocrisy score another notch. With the purported French dedication to multilateral action and the UN and international courts and suchlike (about which we've heard so much), it means that he was willing to protect someone who had committed genocide.

It's noteworthy that Mladic has not yet been captured. Where is he? The US is offering a $5 million reward for him, as yet unclaimed. The UN prosecutor thinks he's still in Serbia. The government there denies it.

Maybe the UN should start looking for him on the Riviera.