Meetings with French Military Intelligence

21 Julie 1987

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Meetings with French Military Intelligence

358742877-3-Meetings-With-French-Military-Intelligence.pdf

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Daily Maverick

https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2017-09-13-declassified-apartheid-profits-pretorias-beehive-in-paris/#.WbqFwHQ8hFQ

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Article de journal

FR

While the military relationship between the two countries benefited arms companies and politicians, it was in many ways held together by the countries' military intelligence agencies. Intelligence agents from South African military intelligence and the French foreign spy agency, the DGSE, ensured regular clandestine meetings throughout the 1980s where weapons and favours could be traded. One of many remarkable examples found in declassified South African military intelligence documents is a series of meetings held in Paris between 22 and 24 July 1987. At the first of these, French intelligence agents offered the South Africans a handful of test models of the state-of-the-art Mistral missile. Still unused by the French military themselves, it was hoped that South African forces could “field test” them in Angola. At the same meeting, the DGSE promised a range of anti-tank and anti-aircraft missiles, even offering to secure supply from other countries such as Germany if they did not have the weapons on hand. Acknowledging the arms embargo (which the French were responsible for enforcing as a member of the Security Council), the DGSE suggested that there were some simple solutions, including clandestinely shipping the weapons via Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of Congo) – a regular route used by the South Africans for busting sanctions. Such meetings were not only about weapons though. They were also a space to play where the South African security forces were drawn into French domestic political battles. Following the meeting with the DGSE, the South Africans were taken to meet Jacques Foccart, long-time ally of then conservative French Prime Minister Jacques Chirac. Foccart wanted to speak to South Africans about a French citizen, Pierre-André Albertini, then imprisoned by the puppet regime of the Ciskei for assisting the ANC. Albertini would eventually be one of the prisoners released in the well-known September 1987 prisoner exchange in Mozambique that included 133 Angolan soldiers and the return of Wynand du Toit from prison in Angola. Yet in July of that year, Foccart had a different and stunning request for the chief of the South African Defence Force: keep Albertini in prison. Why? In Foccart's words, “In the event that Albertini is released now, President Mitterrand will receive credit for this. Prime Minister Chirac is eager to prevent this.” Foccart and Chirac saw political advantage in extending their countryman's imprisonment if only because his liberty would benefit the political chances of his chief rival, Socialist President Francois Mitterand in 1988 French presidential elections.