British interior minister Charles Clarke today angrily denied having told European Union counterparts that some of the suspects in last week's London bomb attacks had been arrested in the past.
French Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy told reporters in Brussels, after Clarke briefed EU justice and home affairs ministers, that some of the suspect group had been "subject to partial arrest" last year.
"It's completely and utterly untrue. I am absolutely staggered he should make that assertion," Mr Clarke, Britain's Home Secretary, told Sky Television.
Mr Sarkozy had told a news conference that it seemed some of the suspect team had been "subject to partial arrest ... in spring 2004".
British Interior Minister Charles Clarke
A French spokesman later said Mr Sarkozy had not been referring to the four main suspected bombers but to other members of a group or network to which they belonged. He also said Mr Sarkozy had been speaking from his own information and not quoting Mr Clarke.
The British minister, visibly angry, said he had no idea what basis Mr Sarkozy had for his remarks, "certainly not from any conversation I, or any of my ministerial colleagues, or anybody in this delegation have had".
Asked whether he had asked Mr Sarkozy to retract the remarks, Mr Clarke said: "No. I haven't seen him. He left the Council half way through. He didn't feel it appropriate to stay till the end of
the discussions. That perhaps is his style. But he's a great leader for France and I wish him all the best." Mr Clarke said Mr Sarkozy had arrived late for the meeting and they had had a brief private conversation.
The row was another setback to Franco-British relations after recent public acrimony over the EU budget and the future of Europe's social model.
Mr Sarkozy said the London bombings highlighted the dilemma for security services of when to make preventive arrests, at the risk of failing to catch a whole group, and when to wait, at the risk of incurring responsibility for potential victims.
Other participants in the meeting, including Belgian Interior Minister Patrick Dewael, said nothing had been said in the session about the possibility that the suspects had been arrested in the past.