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France Denies All Allies' Iraq Intelligence Wrong
MUNICH, Germany (Reuters) - France on Saturday denied a U.S. senator's charge that it and other Western allies were as wrong as America in their pre-war intelligence on Saddam Hussein's alleged weapons programs.

Senator John McCain told reporters at a global security conference: "It wasn't just an American intelligence failure, it was German, it was French, it was British, it was Israeli -- it was all intelligence failures, and we need to find out why that happened."

Asked about McCain's comments, French Defense Minister Michele Alliot-Marie said France had not reached the same conclusions as "the Anglo-Saxons" on the basis of available intelligence such as satellite photographs.

She said that was why Paris had argued against last year's U.S.-led invasion of Iraq and in favor of letting U.N. inspectors keep searching for the alleged weapons of mass destruction (WMD). ...

...The charge that other countries suffered from flawed intelligence is likely to grate with other U.S. allies besides France. German intelligence chiefs have repeatedly said they were skeptical of the U.S. case for war, particularly of Washington's attempt to link Saddam to al Qaeda.

"Germany feels that events have proved the position it took at the time to be right," Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer told the conference earlier. "We were not and are still not convinced of the reasons for war." ...