By Thierry Leveque PARIS, Oct 6 (Reuters) - The son of late President Francois Mitterrand, a former interior minister and several other men who were once among France's most powerful went on trial on Monday over the sale of $790 million in weapons to Angola. The case centres on two arms traders, Frenchman Pierre Falcone and Israeli Arkady Gaydamak, who sold arms to Angola's government during its war against UNITA rebels in the early 1990s. They are accused of paying a network of political contacts to help them, as well as of illegal arms trading. The affair, dubbed "Angolagate", was one of several to taint Socialist Mitterrand's 14-year presidency which ended in 1995 and involves political figures from the right and left, and even a thriller writer, Paul-Loup Sulitzer. The trial has also been a source of tension between Paris and Luanda, where President Jose Eduardo dos Santos and his MPLA have ruled since 1979. Angola dispatched lawyers to have the trial cancelled, citing reasons of Angolan national security. French President Nicolas Sarkozy said on a visit to Angola in May he wanted to "turn the page on the misunderstandings of the past" in a bid to soothe ties. The 42 people in the dock include Mitterrand's eldest son Jean-Christophe, who served as his father's Africa adviser for six years, right-wing former interior minister Charles Pasqua, and the president's former adviser Jacques Attali. All three are suspected of accepting kickbacks to facilitate the deals -- the amounts range from $160,000 in Attali's case to $2.6 million for Mitterrand. CHARGES DENIED Mitterrand is on trial for "complicity in illegal arms trading" while Pasqua and Attali are accused of receiving illegal bonuses from arms dealers. Mitterrand, Pasqua and Attali deny the charges, saying the payments were made in exchange for commissioned studies or for other legitimate reasons. Gaydamak, who lives in Israel and will be tried in absentia, and Falcone bought tanks, helicopters, artillery pieces, mines, flame-throwers and other arms in eastern Europe and sold them to Angola through a Paris-based company and its Slovak subsidiary. Prosecutors say the deals required official authorisation, a charge the defence rejects, apparently with the support of France's current defence minister, Herve Morin. Morin wrote to Falcone's lawyers in July, saying that he believed no illegal arms trading had been committed because the weapons did not pass through France. The defence intends to use that argument in court, but the prosecution argues that since the deals were organised in France the crime was committed there. Angola's 27-year civil war ended with the battlefield death of UNITA's leader Jonas Savimbi in 2002. (Reporting by Thierry Leveque; writing by Francois Murphy)
An Angolan vendor sells fruit on the streets of the nation's capital Luanda in this April 23, 2005 file photo. Angola was the world's fourth biggest coffee producer and a top ...
