Let's put this to rest.
As Armand2REP rightly pointed out, the article is from Sept. 2007, is dated, has had no subsequent confirmation- either from official sources or otherwise, from Pakistan or from France; and is a moot point of discussion.
France has made no secret of its eyeing both the Indian and Pakistani markets to expand its military sales. And as the then French Defense Minister (and now) Herve Morin rightly put it: "to my knowledge, there is no arms embargo for Pakistan".
However, some perspective: the competition to equip subsequent batches of Pakistan's Jf-17's with a multimode pulse-Doppler radar was reported in 2003 as "involving a competition between Phazotron of Russia with the Kopyo system, Galileo (FIAR) of Italy with the Grifo S-7, and Thales of France with the RC 400".
What has changed is the US-France rapprochement with Nicolas Sarkozy's election in May 2007. The deal would have circumvented the EU's arms & technology embargo over China by transferring elements of the source code required for missile and radar integration % avionics to the Pakistanis. Obviously, that would have damaged the US's efforts to keep Beijing's air power at a disadvantage vis-a-vis Taiwan. Since defence analysts have rightly pointed out, the French-built Mirage fighters owned by Taiwan are actually equipped with such missiles and radar. And the US stepped in.
France has previously sold Delhi and Islamabad weapons, often insulated from the political fallout. But the deal with the Jf-17's has been particularly tenuous, and particularly for politico-diplomatic reasons. Back then, it was estimated that the deal would go through and, to quote an AsiaTimes Onliine article, let China "exploit yet another faultline in US-France relations". But several defense analysts warned of the political repercussions and it didn't. Obviously, pissing off Washington and New Delhi and Taiwan was not an option in the face of expanding military weapons' infrastructure.
