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PARIS - British playwright Harold Pinter, an outspoken critic of the Iraq war, is to be given a top French award, the Legion d'Honneur.
French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin, who led France's campaign against the war in Iraq when he was foreign minister, will present the "chevalier" version of the honour - the lowest version - to Pinter in a ceremony in London on Wednesday.
Villepin will also meet British Prime Minister Tony Blair, his office said.
Pinter, whose works include The Birthday Party and The Homecoming, won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2005.
Although ill-health kept him from attending the ceremony, he used the occasion to deliver a video-taped lecture criticising British and US politicians for the war in Iraq.
- REUTERS
