| As if that would be a challenge. |
Asked on LCI television if he was being targeted in an effort to discredit Chirac, Pasqua said. "To me, that's obvious. Perhaps also, those who think that, through me, they can strike Jacques Chirac, are unaware that the nature of our relations has changed, at least politically. And if they think I could have influenced France's policy, they are wrong," said Pasqua, who fell out with Chirac in the mid-1990s over European policy. "I'm capable of defending myself, that's not the issue. (What is at issue is) the campaign that's underway that is targeting a certain number of big French firms and French interests. In the United States, there is a real psychosis. This psychosis consists of them saying, 'if France was hostile to the American intervention (in Iraq), it's due to its economic interests or preferential relations it had with Saddam Hussein'."