DR BERNARD Kouchner, the embattled French foreign minister, sought to salvage his reputation yesterday by responding to accusations levelled by investigative journalist Pierre Péan in a book entitled The World According to K.
The book was released yesterday though excerpts were earlier published by the magazine Marianne. It questions Kouchner’s ethics over more than 40 years, but media attention has focused on allegations that “the French doctor” was paid €4.6 million by the governments of Gabon and Congo for consultancy work between 2004 and 2007.
At the same time he acted as a richly paid private consultant, Kouchner headed a French government aid organisation called Esther, which promotes co-operation in the health sector between Europe and the developing world.
Péan writes that Omar Bongo of Gabon and Denis Sassou-Nguesso of Congo believed that by paying Kouchner for his advice, their countries would receive substantial funds from Esther – a grave conflict of interest.
Two months after Kouchner was appointed foreign minister in May 2007, Sassou-Nguesso presented Kouchner’s junior minister for development, Jean-Marie Bockel, with a shopping list that included financing for a medical centre in Brazzaville. Unknown to Bockel, Kouchner had advocated construction of the medical centre.
Bockel rejected the Congolese president's demands and subsequently denounced the continuation of La Francafrique, as Paris's neocolonial policies towards Africa are called. Kouchner had Bockel transferred to veterans' affairs at the behest of African leaders.
Kouchner’s advice to African governments was billed by Imeda (International Medical Alliance) and Africa Steps, front companies in the names of his friends Eric Danon and Jacques Baudouin.
When Kouchner became foreign minister, he named Danon French ambassador to Monaco and appointed Baudouin a member of his cabinet.
Danon continued to ask the Gabonese government for more than €800,000 in arrears on Kouchner’s consulting fees after Kouchner became minister and Danon an ambassador.
In his own defence, Kouchner yesterday told the Nouvel Observateur magazine: “Is there anything shocking that a former health minister, who over the years did dozens of humanitarian missions without earning a cent, writes reports allowing African countries to improve their health systems?”
Kouchner also told the National Assembly yesterday: “At no moment in Gabon or elsewhere did I make use of my ministerial functions .” In a radio interview, Kouchner’s lawyer threatened to sue Péan for defamation.
The book is all the more damning because Péan is considered one of France’s finest investigative journalists.
In his 1994 book, A French Youth: François Mitterrand, Péan revealed Mitterrand's ties to the collaborationist Vichy regime.
Péan investigated every stage of Kouchner’s long career, from alleged involvement with French intelligence services when Kouchner worked as a medical doctor in Biafra in the late 1960s, to the myths Kouchner propagated about his own role in the founding of Médecins Sans Frontières and during the civil war in Rwanda.
Kouchner staged television images of himself carrying bags of rice in Mogadishu, repeating the gesture three times for the cameras.
In 2003, Kouchner received €25,000 from the French petroleum company Total for writing a 19-page report exonerating Total of using forced labour in Burma. After the scandal broke, Kouchner gave the money to charity.
Kouchner has also been criticised for appointing his wife, Christine Ockrent, to the number two job at France Monde, the country’s external radio and television holding company. The couple operate like a family business, Péan says.
Though she is paid €40,000 a month, Ockrent continues to fulfil numerous paid speaking engagements.
As foreign minister, Kouchner has made repeated gaffes and moralising outbursts. He is the only French politician who supported the US invasion of Iraq, and the cover of Péan’s book shows him embracing George W Bush.
The Socialist Kouchner was the main trophy in President Sarkozy’s policy of “opening” to the opposition left. Sarkozy was impressed by Kouchner’s high popularity ratings, built on his reputation as a pioneer of relief aid and human rights. Now there are rumours of Kouchner’s dismissal, and his disgrace is billed as the fall of an icon.
Sarkozy has entrusted little power to “the French doctor”. Real control of foreign policy lies at the Élysée Palace, with Sarkozy’s infinitely more discreet and even-keeled diplomatic adviser, Jean-David Levitte.