French ex-premier de Villepin questioned over Pakistan arms deal

Villepin, who at the time was a top aide to then President Jacques Chirac, appeared in front of investigators as a witness and at his own request.

After more than four hours of testimony to investigating magistrate Judge Van Ruymbeke, Villepin emerged to say he thought there was no link between the bombing and a decision taken to halt the deal.

"I have indicated to Judge Van Ruymbeke that in my view there was not any link between the Karachi bomb and the halt called by President Jacques Chirac on the payment of commissions," Villepin told reporters.

Families of the bereaved say that shortly after the centre-right parties won parliamentary elections in 2002, Chirac ordered an investigation into the deal amid suspicion that kickbacks were being paid by intermediaries in the deal back to France.

Investigators are probing allegations that some of the money went to finance the 1995 presidential election campaign of then Prime Minister Edouard Balladur. His spokesman at the time was Nicolas Sarkozy, the current president.

Last week, the bereaved families said Sarkozy should answer questions about the circumstances surrounding the bomb.

Their request is unlikely to be met because Sarkozy is entitled to presidential immunity. But it throws a spotlight onto a murky affair of submarine sales, kickbacks and French political involvement at the highest level.

The suicide attack in the Pakistani port city of Karachi in May 2002 killed 11 French engineers and technicians. They were working on the construction of Agosta submarines that France sold to Pakistan under a contract signed in the mid-1990s.

Pakistani authorities initially presented the suicide attack as the suspected work of al Qaeda Islamic militants. But questions were later raised about circumstances linking the attacks with a vendetta over commissions relating to the submarine deal.

Sarkozy was budget minister in 1993-1995, years straddling the signing of the Agosta contract in September 1994, under then Prime Minister Edouard Balladur, who in turn was gearing up for a presidential election contest he ultimately lost to Chirac.

A parliamentary report published on the Karachi mystery in May 2010 spoke of commissions for foreign intermediaries, noting those payments were "prudishly described as exceptional marketing expenses," worth 84 million euros (112,2 million dollars) or 10.25 percent of the value of the submarine contract.

Under French immunity rules, a president can refuse to be questioned while in office.