Obama Envoy Mitchell’s Firm Lobbied for Dubai’s Ruler

George Mitchell, President Barack Obama’s special Middle East troubleshooter, was chairman of a law firm that was paid about $8 million representing Dubai’s ruler in connection with a child-trafficking lawsuit.

From Bloomberg

The DLA Piper law firm did legal and lobbying work on the case, which alleged that Dubai’s Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al- Maktoum and another official used children kidnapped from other countries to ride as jockeys in camel races. The firm lobbied federal agencies, members of the U.S. House and about two dozen Senate offices, including those of Obama, Vice President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in 2006 and 2007, according to Justice Department foreign-agent disclosures.

Mitchell, 75, who isn’t a registered lobbyist, didn’t lobby either on this issue or for Dubai generally. DLA Piper partner Bill Minor said in an e-mail that Mitchell, a former Democratic senator from Maine, mainly focused on growth and management at the firm of almost 4,000 attorneys and 65 offices worldwide, and high-profile projects such as an investigation of steroid use in Major League Baseball.

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Iran Expresses Objection To France’s Sarkozy

Iran has summoned the French envoy to Tehran to protest at critical comments by President Nicolas Sarkozy about his counterpart Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, state television reported on Thursday.

Sarkozy, whose government has taken a tough stance against Tehran over its nuclear drive, said he could not even sit at the same table as Ahmadinejad and that he does not represent the people of Iran.

The foreign ministry summoned Bernard Poletti on Wednesday to express “its strong objections to the recent interfering comments by the French president,” according to a ministry statement read on state television.

AFP

 
French President Nicolas Sarkozy delivers the closing speech of an European summit on innovation in Paris December 9. Iran has summoned the French envoy to Tehran to protest at comments by Sarkozy about refusing to meet his counterpart Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, state television reported on Thursday(AFP/Pool/File/Eric Feferberg)

The ministry also said it warned Poletti “about the repercussion on bilateral relations of any repetition of such ill-considered remarks.”

Sarkozy said it was “impossible for me to shake hands with someone who has dared to say that Israel should be wiped off the map,” and that he would not “sit at the same table (as Ahmadinejad).”

His comments were made on the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, according to the French presidency website.

Iran does not recognise Israel and Ahmadinejad has caused outrage by saying the Jewish state was a “cancerous tumour” and should disappear and that the Holocaust was a “myth”.

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