President Nicolas Sarkozy has denied an allegation by the former head of French nuclear group Areva that he had sought to sell a nuclear reactor to Libyan leader Muammar Gadafy until mid-2010.
"There was never any question of selling a reactor to Mr Gadafy," Mr Sarkozy told France Inter radio, a week after Anne Lauvergeon, Areva's chief executive until 2011, made the claim in an interview on the website of L'Express last Tuesday.
Ms Lauvergeon, known as "Atomic Anne", was a top aide to late Socialist President Francois Mitterrand and has been tipped as a possible minister in a future Socialist government under Francois Hollande.
Her allegation has been read as a political salvo coming as the conservative Mr Sarkozy battles in vain to narrow Mr Hollande's double-digit lead for a May 6 presidential runoff that will follow a first-round vote on Sunday.
"Allow me to tell you that if there is one head of state in the world who has not associated with Mr. Gadafy and who is responsible for his departure and his fate then that is me," Mr Sarkozy told France Inter.
Mr Sarkozy led the West's intervention in Libya that helped rebels end Gadafy's 42-year rule, but back in 2007 he welcomed the late dictator to Paris and a December 2008 cooperation agreement between the two nations made available to the media at the time provides for the supply of nuclear reactors.
Mr Sarkozy's aides have said Ms Lauvergeon was trying to settle scores and said that if she had been witness to any misconductin her former post, she should have reported it at the time. Mr Sarkozy has been pounding Mr Hollande for months over his agreement with the Greens party to reduce France's dependency on nuclear power if the left wins the election and has visited nuclear sites to underline his support for the industry.
Relations between Mr Sarkozy and Ms Lauvergeon have soured to the point where he blocked her reappointment as chief executive last year and Areva initially withheld her €1.5 million severance pay in a dispute over a botched takeover of Canadian uranium mining start-up UraMin.
Reuters