- PARIS (Reuters) - A senior
French politician, now a minister in President Nicolas Sarkozy's government,
suggested last year that U.S. President George W. Bush might have been
behind the September 11, 2001 attacks, according to a website.
-
- The www.ReOpen911.info website, which promotes September
11 conspiracy theories, has posted a video clip of French Housing Minister
Christine Boutin appearing to question that Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda
group orchestrated the attacks. Boutin's office sought to play down the
remarks.
-
- Asked in an interview last November, before she became
minister, whether she thought Bush might be behind the attacks, Boutin
says: "I think it is possible. I think it is possible."
-
- Boutin backs her assertion by pointing to the large number
of people who visit websites that challenge the official line over the
September 11 strikes against U.S. cities.
-
- "I know that the websites that speak of this problem
are websites that have the highest number of visits ... And I tell myself
that this expression of the masses and of the people cannot be without
any truth."
-
- Boutin's office sought to play down the remarks, saying
that later in the same interview she says: "I'm not telling you that
I adhere to that position." This comment does not appear on the video
clip on ReOpen911.
-
- Numerous other websites have also posted the clip in
recent days and the story has started to seep into the mainstream media.
-
- "Christine Boutin snared by her controversial suggestions
about September 11," Le Monde newspaper said in a headline.
-
- Liberation newspaper on Saturday quoted Boutin's spokesman
Christian Dupont as saying that she had not wanted to appear pro or anti-Bush
at a time when Sarkozy was being branded a "U.S. poodle" after
meeting the president in Washington.
-
- "And then she is not the foreign minister,"
Dupont added.
-
- France appears to be particularly fertile ground for
conspiracy theories. In 2002, a book that claimed that no airliner hit
the U.S. Pentagon in the September 11 attacks topped the French bestseller
lists.
-
- However, the French are not alone in their skepticism.
-
- According to a Scripps Howard/Ohio University poll carried
out last July, more than one-third of Americans suspect U.S. officials
helped in the September 11 attacks or took no action to stop them so the
United States could later go to war.
-
- The U.S. State Department has rejected these accusations.
-
- Almost 3,000 people died when hijackers crashed planes
into New York, Washington and Pennsylvania.
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