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Vladimir Putin, the Russian prime minister, has hinted that Dominique Strauss-Kahn may be the victim of a conspiracy to force him from the head of the IMF.

Mr Putin said that he finds it hard to believe that the sex charges against the Frenchman are true and that he may have fallen victim to a shadowy plot to discredit him.

"It is hard for me to evaluate the real political underlying reasons and I do not even want to get into that subject, but I cannot believe that everything is as it seems and how it was initially presented," he said. "It does not sit right in my head."

Mr Strauss-Kahn was arrested at JFK airport in New York on May 14 for allegedly sexually assaulting a hotel chambermaid.

Mr Putin's public support for Mr Strauss-Kahn comes days after a French politician alleged that the former IMF chief had said before his arrest that he thought Mr Putin was actively plotting his downfall.

The politician, Claude Bartolone, said: "He said the Russians and notably Putin had allied themselves with France to try to have him fired from the IMF to stop him running for (French) president."

The Russian prime minister's support for the embattled former IMF head is likely to be seized upon by his critics who suspect that he is a male chauvinist, a claim Mr Putin denies.

He sparked uproar in 2006 however when he was overheard joking about rape allegations against then Israeli President Moshe Katsav. Mr Putin was quoted as saying: "What a mighty man he turns out to be! He raped 10 women - I would never have expected this from him. He surprised us all - we all envy him!" His spokesman said the sense of the controversial joke had been lost in translation. Mr Katsav was later convicted of rape and is now serving out a seven-year prison sentence.