Former French PM faces trial over Pakistan arms deal

Paris: Former French Prime Minister Edouard Balladur and a former Defence minister are to stand trial over the so-called Karachi affair — a submarine deal with Pakistan in the mid-1990s, which allegedly involved secret commissions.
Under that deal Balladur, now aged 90, allegedly got funding for his failed 1995 bid for the presidency, the BBC reported.
His then Defence Minister, François Léotard, also faces trial.
Both have categorically denied any wrongdoing.
In 2002 a bombing in Karachi killed 11 French engineers. There were suspicions that the car bombing, which wrecked a bus, was an act of revenge after President Jacques Chirac had ordered payment of the secret arms deal commissions to stop.
Attorney General François Molins announced that Balladur and Léotard would go before a special tribunal for present and past government officials accused of wrongdoing.