Mood of Paris: ‘We Are in Hell of a Mess’ : Chirac’s Terrorism Policy Divides Government and Confuses Citizens

PARIS —  The release of two French hostages comes at a time of low morale in France, when many French citizens suspect their government of bargaining with terrorists and the general mood of Paris is still bruised from the series of terrorist bombings two months ago.

An anonymous French official, quoted in the French press a week ago, summed up the mood with some pungent phraseology best translated as “we are in a hell of a mess.”

It is still too early to tell whether the government of Premier Jacques Chirac, which is taking credit for the release of the hostages, can now change this mood and lift morale. Much depends on the price paid by France for the hostages and whether five other hostages soon follow their colleagues to freedom.

Much also depends on whether the government succeeds in preventing a resumption of the kind of terrorism that shocked France and the rest of the world in September. Eleven people were killed and more than 160 were injured in a series of random bombings in crowded sites of Paris during a ten-day period.

Brief Lull in Attacks

Paris has not been free of bombings since then. The extreme leftist organization Direct Action has bombed specific targets such as the three companies it blasted before dawn Tuesday to protest their ties to South Africa. But there has been a lull for two months in the murderous and random attacks, rooted in the Middle East, that terrified Paris.

Yet, despite the lull, the mood has not been a happy one, either in the streets or in the high reaches of government.

It is a common sight in Paris these days for three armed policemen, one slinging a submachine gun on a shoulder, to accost an Arab or a black man on the broad sidewalks of the Champs Elysees or in the corridors of the subway or in some other public place.

On their demand, he will hand over a passport or an identity card. While one policeman reads the details into a walkie-talkie, the accosted man looks about nervously, suspiciously, avoiding the eyes of curious Parisians who have slowed their walk to watch. If satisfied, the policemen, with hardly a word, hand back his papers and send him on his way.

The scene may trouble onlookers, but they usually swallow their distaste. The police, after all, are trying to prevent another clap of terror.

Chirac’s Policy Criticized

A lack of ease prevails in the government as well. Chirac looks foolish in many French eyes, contorting himself to defend a Syrian government that most people believe had a heavy hand in the bombings.

Few newspapers accept his denials about what the French are up to in their desperate attempt to prevent a resumption of the bombings and to gain release of all the French hostages in Lebanon.

French officials, usually sophisticated and self-confident enough to shrug off foreign criticism, sound shrewish and testy in their denunciations of attacks against them in the American press. Many people wonder whether France has overreached itself by taking a major role in the Middle East.

It is obvious that the government wants to appear courageous, to prevent a recurrence of the bombings, to free all the hostages, and to retain a strong influence in the Middle East--all at the same time. Also, the government wants to do all this in such a way that enhances the candidacy of Chirac for president in 1988. This is a difficult juggling act for even the most adroit players, and the French have proven themselves rather clumsy at it.

A Series of Embarrassments

The government’s diplomacy has subjected it to a series of embarrassments. The first came at the end of October when Le Monde, France’s most influential newspaper, reported that the government had concluded a truce with a family of Lebanese Christian brothers and cousins accused of planting the Paris bombs in September to force the release of their leader, Georges Ibrahim Abdallah, from a French prison.

According to Le Monde, the French government, using Syrian and Algerian officials as intermediaries, asked the family to wait until next February when Abdallah, charged with complicity in the murder of an American military attache and an Israeli diplomat in Paris, is supposed to come to trial on the charges. The French, according to the account, assured the family, which lives in Syrian-controlled territory of northern Lebanon, that the case was weak and implied that Abdallah would surely be freed.

To guarantee that the Syrian government will hold the clan to the truce, said Le Monde and other newspapers, France was ready to sell arms to Syria. The Chirac government denied the report about arms sales but stressed time and again for several weeks that France exonerated Syria of all blame in the Paris bombings.

Since many French are convinced that Syria, at the least, helped whisk the bombers out of France to their sanctuary in northern Lebanon, the French government looked rather sniveling for continually stressing Syrian innocence.

Supported Syrian Sanctions

This was especially true when Britain announced in late October that it had conclusive proof of Syrian involvement in the abortive attempt to slip a bomb aboard an El Al Israel Airlines flight from London to Tel Aviv last April. After first showing some reluctance, the French finally joined the British and other foreign ministers of the European Communities on Monday in voting for a mild package of sanctions against Syria.

The French also have tried to improve relations with Iran in hopes of persuading the Tehran government to use its influence to obtain the release of the hostages in Lebanon. The French first expelled Massoud Rajavi, the leader of the most powerful Iranian opposition group in exile, and then negotiated a settlement of a dispute over repayment by France of a $1-billion loan made by the deposed Iranian government of the Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi.

French officials smarted a week ago when the Washington Post, in an editorial, accused the Paris government of cravenness for its dealings with Syria. It was the latest in a long series of what the French government regards as unfair attacks on France or distortions about France in the American press, and officials reacted angrily, defending their policy loudly. Newspapers devoted a great deal of space to the editorial, sometimes reprinting it in full.

Syrian Role Suspected

To justify its reluctance to move against Syria, officials of the Chirac government have continually hinted in private that some of the terrorism in Europe may be organized by Syrian agents operating out of the control of President Hafez Assad.

The most extreme version of this came from Chirac himself. He reportedly told Arnaud de Borchgrave, editor-in-chief of the Washington Times, of his suspicion that renegade Syrian agents, working with agents of the Israeli secret service, the Mossad, may have plotted the bombing of the El Al airliner.

Since the embarrassing publication of these sentiments, Chirac and his aides have protested that his remarks were misinterpreted, that he thought the interview was off-the-record, that he did not know a tape recorder was on and that he never said what De Borchgrave said he said.

When De Borchgrave published a transcript of the interview, Chirac’s aides refused to make any further comment. Chirac emerged from the incident looking rather naive and flippant, ready to go far afield just to defend Syria.

Leaders Divided on Issue

To make matters worse, the French appear rather divided and feeble on the whole issue of Syria. President Francois Mitterrand, a Socialist, who has special constitutional responsibility in foreign affairs, has hinted that he disapproves of Chirac’s dealings with Syria.

Members of Chirac’s own conservative coalition have expressed their unease with the dealings and the defense of Syria. Socialist deputies, who were reluctant to criticize Chirac during the ten days of bombings in September, are attacking him now with a good deal of vigor.

A kind of meanness has crept into daily life. The conservatives took over control of the National Assembly and the government last March after campaigning to increase the powers of the police against criminals and to weed out illegal immigrants. The bombings have given the government and police a pretext to exercise police muscle and harass immigrants.

Since the bombers were believed to be Middle Eastern, the police, under the guise of ferreting out bombers, can take after any one with Arab features or dark skin. They have not arrested any bombers so far but they have come up with a large number of illegal immigrants.

In the most celebrated crackdown since the bombings, Paris police rounded up 101 illegal immigrants from the West African country of Mali, herded them into buses, rushed them to the airport late at night, and pushed them aboard a chartered airliner that flew them back to Mali. A few reportedly had to be shackled to their seats, and none were allowed to see a lawyer before their expulsion.

The roundup and expulsion troubled many French, but, in the aftermath of the bombings, the outcry was muted. It was loud enough, however, for French officials to make clear that, in the future, they will try to throw out illegal immigrants in a less theatrical way.