But Who Is the Real Enemy? : Chirac Gets Opposition Support in Terror Fight

PARIS —  The French political Establishment, in a show of national solidarity, rallied behind the government Friday in its war on the terrorist enemy, but there was a good deal of disagreement in France about who the enemy really is.

“It’s one thing to affirm that we are at war,” the influential Paris newspaper Le Monde said in an editorial. “But it’s still necessary to know against whom.”

The police and special agents are not wavering from their theory that the rash of bombings that have killed eight people and injured more than 150 this month was the work of a band of fanatical, Marxist northern Lebanese Christians willing to murder and maim to force France to release their leader from prison.

But some French policy-makers and most of the French press now maintain that the terror is the work of some government or organization or group of organizations that wants to prevent France from playing any role in the Middle East. Most speculation falls on Syria or Iran, but the evidence offered is limited.

The two theories are not necessarily contradictory. The fanatical band could be acting on behalf of a foreign government. But there is a good deal of difference of emphasis in the way the French who hold these views pursue the enemy. While the police continue to pass out photos of the brothers of the prisoner, Georges Ibrahim Abdallah, policy-makers and journalists are speculating about who has been hurt the most by French policy in the Middle East and therefore wants revenge.

Mitterrand Returns Home

Meanwhile, Premier Jacques Chirac conferred with President Francois Mitterrand, who had cut short a state visit to Indonesia to return home because of the wave of bombings. The conservative premier met with the Socialist chief of state at the Elysee Palace for 50 minutes. Details of their discussion were not disclosed.

The urgency of their meeting was underscored by a breech of protocol. Chirac went to Charles de Gaulle Airport to meet Mitterrand, and the two men rode together in the same car to the palace instead of traveling, as is customary, in separate cars. Mitterrand offered no comment upon his arrival, but during a stopover in Kuwait he described the bombings as “unacceptable and contrary to human justice and feelings.”

Earlier Friday, Chirac called the leaders of all political parties, one by one, into his offices at the Hotel Matignon to brief them on the steps taken by his government against the terrorism and to ask for their support. He received it in each case.

“We understand and approve all the initiatives that have been taken or must be taken to bring the terrorist plans to a halt,” Georges Marchais, general secretary of the Communist Party, told reporters. “Mr. Chirac has reassured us, and he has declared that nothing will be done that could injure freedom and democracy.”

Nine Persons Sought

While the meetings were in progress, the government’s main police office began providing all policemen with notices picturing the four brothers of the imprisoned Georges Ibrahim Abdallah and five other members of an organization headed by Abdallah that is known as the Lebanese Revolutionary Armed Factions.

The police have announced that witnesses definitely identified two of the brothers as bombers in Paris. At least officially, the police appeared to be undaunted by the fact that three of the brothers appeared at news conferences in Lebanon on Wednesday and Thursday and denied that they were involved in the bombings.

One brother, Emile Ibrahim Abdallah, was identified as one of two terrorists who bombed a clothing store while it was packed with women and children Wednesday, killing five people and injuring more than 50.

According to the French news agency Agence France-Presse, it was theoretically possible for him to bomb the store which was hit at 5:30 p.m. and be present for a news conference at his home village of Koubeyat in northern Lebanon at 12:30 p.m., Paris time, the next day.

Skepticism Over Charges

To do so, he would have had to board a plane to Vienna three hours after the bombing, change at Vienna for a plane to Larnaca in Cyprus, hire a private plane in Larnaca at 3:30 a.m., fly to Damascus, and then drive 60 miles to his home village. This is possible, but it did not seem probable to many French, who regarded the police charges with skepticism.

The older brother, Georges Ibrahim Abdallah, 35, is serving a four-year prison sentence for carrying false documents and hiding firearms. He has served long enough to be eligible for parole, but he has also been charged with complicity in the killing of an American military attache and an Israeli diplomat four years ago.

Two terrorist organizations have claimed responsibility for the Paris bombings and have demanded the release of Abdallah and of two other Lebanese prisoners jailed on terrorist charges. The French police believe, however, that the terrorists would be satisfied if only Abdallah were released.

But many influential French now suspect that the terrorists may want far more than Abdallah--far more, in fact, than the three prisoners. According to this view, the terrorists in Paris, linked to the terrorist killing of French soldiers in the U.N. peacekeeping force in Lebanon and to the kidnapers holding seven French hostages in Lebanon, want nothing less than a withdrawal of France and French influence from Lebanon.

‘Outburst Has Other Ends’

In a long article in the influential Paris newspaper Liberation Friday, commentator Marc Kravetz wrote that “everything indicates that the present fiery outburst has other ends (than the release of Abdallah), and it is France’s foreign policy in the Middle East that is the target.”

Kravetz said that the bombings in Paris, the attacks on the French forces in Lebanon, the slaying of a French military attache in Beirut on Thursday, and the holding of the seven hostages “are all relatively coherent pieces of a monstrous puzzle that we are now beginning to discern.”

In a similar analysis, Le Monde said that Syria has long wanted to erode French influence in Lebanon. At the same time, the newspaper said in its editorial, it was not the style of Syria’s President Hafez Assad to crush and humiliate an adversary in the way that the terrorists are trying to humble France.

Iran was an obvious suspect as well, Le Monde said, since France has sold arms to Iraq in its war with Iran. Also French influence was one of the obstacles to the creation of a fundamentalist Shia Muslim state in Lebanon.