| An influential US lawmaker called Thursday for a government investigation into charges that France secretly supplied passports to fleeing Iraqi officials after the fall of Saddam Hussein. House Judiciary Committee Chairman James Sensenbrenner wrote a letter asking Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge to investigate news reports that the French government in Syria issued French passports to an unknown number of Iraqis who worked for Saddam's government. "If the Department of Homeland Security receives or uncovers any information suggesting that this allegation is true, or that the French government has otherwise improperly issued its passports to any person who is not a French national, you should consider this the coup de grace for France," Sensenbrenner wrote. If the charges are found to be true, he added, France should be suspended — "because of the threat to the security interests of the American people" — from a visa waiver programme that allows citizens from designated countries to enter the United States as temporary visitors without having to first obtain a visa. The programme, he explained, presupposes that participant countries do not pose a terror threat. "While this premise might have been true in years past regarding nationals of countries such as France, it is questionable whether it is true today," the Wisconsin representative wrote. "The risk that French nationals might use the visa waiver programme to seek to enter the US to perform terrorist acts is not merely theoretical. Zacarias Moussaoui, who many believe was the '20th September 11 hijacker,' came to the US as a French national under the visa waiver programme, using his legitimately issued French passport," Sensenbrenner wrote. |