The unprecedented letter, signed by the French Ambassador to the US and drafted in the Foreign Ministry in Paris, details an “organised campaign of disinformation” from within the US Government over the past nine months.

A two-page list attached to the letter, which was also delivered to the Senate and House of Representatives, details news reports including alleged French weapons sales to Iraq and a report last week accusing French officials in Syria of issuing French passports to former Baath party officials.

The stories, all of which France has denied, are from anonymous “administration officials”, states the letter, which is signed by Jean-David Levitte, the French Ambassador to America. They are part of an ugly campaign to destroy the image of France, one French official said.

Marie Masdupuy, of the Foreign Ministry in Paris, said: “As part of the campaign of explanation we are undertaking in the United States, we have decided to counter the untrue accusations which have appeared in the US press and which have deeply shocked the French.”

One White House official called the accusation “utter nonsense”.

It is clear that the Franco-American bitterness will last long after the war. A White House spokesman said: “The substance of the complaint has no basis in fact. I think Secretary (of State) Colin Powell stated it well recently when he said the US and France have been in marriage counselling for the past 200 years.”

The letter, however, was more like divorce papers. The list begins with a New York Times report in September alleging that, in 1998, France and Germany had supplied Iraq with high precision switches used in detonating nuclear weapons. A French denial at the time said that Iraq had ordered the switches as “spare parts” for medical equipment, but that France blocked the sale and alerted the Germans.

In November, The Washington Post quoted an “American intelligence source” saying that France possessed prohibited strains of the human smallpox virus. Paris issued an angry denial and the paper later printed a rebuttal.

Several other stories detailing arms sales to Iraq, all denied, followed in various newspapers, but French sang-froid finally evaporated on May 6 when The Washington Times ran a story quoting “Ame- rican intelligence sources”, that France had helped wanted Iraqi officials to escape. The US State Department denied the story on May 9.

France has also been angered by reports in the British press about alleged Iraqi memoranda that showed a close diplomatic relationship between Paris and Baghdad.

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