France accused of funding Mali militants A FORMER US ambassador to Mali has alleged that a hostage ransom paid by France was used to fund the al-Qaeda-linked Islamist militants its troops are now fighting. Vicki Huddleston alleged France paid a $US17 million ($A16.6 million) ransom to free hostages seized from a French mining site. French officials denied paying any ransoms. French soldiers are pushing north into the territory where the missing captives are believed to be held, Vicki Huddleston's allegations strengthened the view the Mali rebellion was funded largely by ransoms paid in recent years. In February 2011, three hostages seized at a French uranium mine in Niger - including one Frenchwoman - were freed; four remain with al-Qaeda-linked militants in Mali. The Islamist rebels retreating northward are apparently taking their Western hostages with them - among them the mine workers and three other French citizens seized elsewhere. Huddleston, who served as ambassador to Mali and held positions in the US State Department and Defense Department before retiring, told France's iTele network the French money allowed al-Qaeda's North Africa branch to flourish in Mali. "Although governments deny they're paying ransoms, everyone is pretty much aware that money has passed hands indirectly through different accounts and it ends up in the treasury, let us say, of al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb and allows them to buy weapons and recruit," she said in comments aired on Friday. Magnus Ranstorp, a terrorism expert at the Swedish National Defense College, said a French policy of paying for hostages through middlemen has broad support from a public that sees near daily references to the hostages in the media. Huddleston said the $17 million payment was intended to win freedom for the hostages kidnapped in September 2010 from their guarded villas in Arlit, where they were working with French nuclear company Areva. Claude Gueant, French President Nicolas Sarkozy's chief of staff at the time, on Friday denied France had ever paid a ransom and said intermediaries had been negotiating to free the hostages. Philippe Lalliot, spokesman for the foreign ministry, dismissed Huddleston's comments as based on "rumour." Even as France launched its military intervention in Mali on January 11, the hostages remained in the French public eye. Rarely a day goes by without a story about their possible whereabouts.