A French army officer accused of spying for Belgrade has told the French counter-intelligence agency DST how he betrayed NATO secrets in the course of four meetings with a Serb agent between July and October of this year.
Comdt Pierre Bunel was arrested last weekend and could be sentenced to up to 15 years in prison. He identified his contact as Mr Jovan Milanovic, a colonel in Serb army intelligence, who masqueraded as a diplomat at the Yugoslav mission to the EU.
The two men met for the first time at a Serb restaurant in Brussels last summer. At their last meeting, in Mr Milanovic's Brussels home on October 1st, the French officer handed over a secret NATO document detailing contingency plans for strikes against Serb targets in Kosovo and Serbia.
The 46-year-old officer says he acted alone, out of conviction - his lawyer cites "humanitarian reasons". Asked whether he received any gifts from Mr Milanovic, he replied: "No, apart from the two meals he bought me."
French officers have sometimes shared the anti-Muslim sentiments of their Serb colleagues. It seems that in Comdt Bunel's case, familiarity with Muslims bred contempt; he was an intelligence officer and Arabic interpreter in Saudi Arabia during the 1991 Gulf War.
Comdt Bunel served with NATO forces in Bosnia in 1996 and became the chief aide to Gen Pierre Wiroth, the military adviser to the French ambassador to NATO, the same year.
This is at least the third time that members of the French military have been accused of helping the Serbs. Last December, Ms Louise Arbour, the chief war crimes prosecutor at the International Court of Justice in The Hague, said French peacekeepers were not even trying to apprehend suspected Serb war criminals in their sector.
"Only the arrest of Radovan Karadzic can clear France of suspicion and restore its credibility," Le Figaro said yesterday. Comdt Bunel's betrayal is all the more embarrassing if, as Le Monde reported yesterday - and contrary to official French claims - it was the US army and not French intelligence which noticed his suspicious behaviour.
