Report: French PR firm linked to poisoning

http://washingtontimes.com/upi-breaking/20041217-070555-7473r.htm

Kiev, Ukraine, Dec. 17 (UPI) -- The extent of an apparent plot to poison Viktor Yushchenko, Ukraine's opposition leader, and then cover up the evidence now reaches across Europe.

Yushchenko, who said he was poisoned with dioxin at a dinner with Ukraine's secret police, was found to have ingested 6,000 times the level of dioxin healthy people have, the Financial Times reported Friday.

Soon after Yushchenko first claimed he had been poisoned, President Leonid Kuchma's son-in-law engaged a French public relations team to initiate a media campaign, centered on a Vienna clinic, calculated to disparage the poisoning accusations, the newspaper said.

Yffic Nouvellon of EuroRSCG and his public relations team arranged a press conference where Lothar Wicke, general manager of Vienna's Rudolfinerhaus Clinic, contradicted Yushchenko's poisoning allegations.

Nouvellon also contacted international media offering "evidence" Yushchenko had not been poisoned. When asked during the media campaign, Nouvellon denied any connections to Kuchma's family.

The clinic's president has since cut its ties to Nouvellon and EuroRSCG and confirmed that Yushchenko was poisoned with the most powerful form of dioxin, TCDD, notorious from its use by U.S. forces in the Vietnam War in the defoliant Agent Orange, Sky News said.