Experience, Subtlety Stressed : Europeans Use Own Style in Coping With Terrorism

Americans may look on Europeans as hesitant and craven in the way they handle terrorists, but Europeans say they have lived with terrorism for a long time and are far more experienced and subtle than Americans in dealing with the problem.

That attitude is the main reason why the American bombing raids on Libya have created such an enormous and tense conflict between the United States and most of its European allies.

A number of European newspapers, in their anger over the raids, have accused President Reagan of living more in movies like “Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo” and “Rambo” than in real life. Those accusations reflect a feeling that the United States would have benefitted if it had relied more on European wisdom than on American muscle in its attempt to squelch Col. Moammar Kadafi.

American officials, on the other hand, have privately accused the Europeans of being motivated more by their economic interests than their philosophy.

For decades, Europeans have been forced to come to grips with far more than Arab terrorism. European government have been infuriated and often frustrated by the Irish Republican Army in Northern Ireland, the Basque separatists in Spain, the Baader-Meinhof gang in West Germany, the Red Brigades in Italy, and many other deadly though smaller groups like the Armenian nationalists. Far more Europeans than Americans have been killed by terrorists during the five years of the Reagan Administration.

Europeans even differ with American officials in their perception of the Libyan problem. They insist that Libya, despite the fiery oratory of Kadafi, is a less important source of terrorism than Syria and Iran.

“Kadafi is not the only cause of the problem of the Middle East,” said a high-ranking French official recently, “and stopping Kadafi will not end the problem.”

Eric Salerno, foreign editor of Italian newspaper Il Messaggero and a longtime specialist in Arab affairs, said in Rome that although the terrorist leader Abu Nidal received protection and financing from Kadafi last year, he was based in Syria and, to the degree that he has any outside political direction, it probably comes from Damascus.

Salerno then expressed a general European attitude about the heart of the problem.

“You must remember that Italy is the only country plagued by terrorism that got rid of it,” he said. “Italy knows that you can’t get rid of terrorism unless you eliminate the causes. The causes of international terrorism would be eliminated with an Arab peace between Palestine and Israel, or at least the main part of it would disappear.”

Restrained Reaction

In their dealings with home-grown terrorism, Europeans, fearful of making things worse, have tried hard not to overreact. In an editorial Wednesday, the Financial Times of London, criticized Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher for succumbing to the U.S. government’s pressure to support the raids.

“The British government has never believed terrorism can be defeated by military attacks, and it does not believe it now,” the paper said. “This is not its strategy for dealing with the IRA. . . . “

The Thatcher government, however, does not like such attempts to draw a parallel between Libya and Ireland.

“Ireland is fighting as hard as we are to stamp out the IRA,” a close Thatcher aide said Wednesday. “The Libyan leader is at the heart of the current problems. That’s a big difference.”

Basques Suppressed

Spain is another country that tries to deal with its own terrorism with moderation. Prime Minister Felipe Gonzalez has resisted all kinds of military pressure to try to reduce Basque terrorism by suppressing Basque nationalism as ruthlessly as it was suppressed during the era of the late dictator Francisco Franco.

The Gonzalez administration has obviously decided that the scores of assassinations by the separatists every year are less costly than the general conflagration that might be provoked in the Basque area by cultural oppression.

European officials and experts on terrorism say an overreaction, which is how they classify the bombing raids, tends not only to fail but to make matters worse.

Roger Matthews, the highly regarded Middle East editor of the Financial Times, wrote Wednesday that the American action has reinforced Kadafi’s position both within Libya and within the Arab world.

Optimism Discounted

He noted that U.S. officials have expressed the belief that the raid could in the long run lead to a coup against Kadafi. “But,” Matthews commented, “there is little in modern Middle East history to support such optimism.”

In a similar vein, Samy Cohen, a French specialist on foreign affairs, said in an interview published in the Paris newspaper Le Matin on Wednesday that “no Arab country has ever been destabilized by an attack coming from a Western country.”

To counter terrorism, the European officials and experts suggest only limited actions: increased police protection, punishment of those directly involved and caught, and, most important, an attempt to deal with the political and social problems that are at the root of the terrorism.

Increasingly, under pressure from the Reagan Administration, they are reluctantly accepting some indirect measures, such as the European Communities endorsement Monday of a limit to the number of Libyan diplomats allowed in embassies in Europe.

Economic Vulnerability

Outside Europe, however, there is a good deal of suspicion that much of the European hesitation in dealing with terrorism also stems from its economic and geographic vulnerability. In 1984, Libya’s trade with Italy amounted to $4.3 billion, with West Germany $2.8 billion, with Spain $1.3 billion, and with France $1 billion. Several thousand Europeans work in Libya.

Italians feel particularly vulnerable. Maurizio Cremasco, defense expert of the International Affairs Institute in Rome, said that the government of Premier Bettino Craxi is genuinely worried about the 8,200 Italians working and living in Libya and is concerned, as well, about losing the almost $2 billion of exports to the country.

In addition, Italian firms are owed about $1 billion by Tripoli. Building contractors and other companies owed money might be forced into bankruptcy if hope of receiving payment is lost.

It is easier for terrorists from the Middle East to mount attacks in Europe than in the United States. The Europeans thus feel exposed, both economically and geographically. Now they resent the fact that their territory is likely to be the site where Libyans vent their fury against the United States.

Politics of Geography

Cremasco, for instance, said that although Italy feels a lingering obligation to Libya as a former Italian colony, its proximity as a Mediterranean neighbor is an even more important factor in the Italian government’s attitude toward Kadafi.

He said the ineffective Libyan missile attack Tuesday on a U.S. radar station on the island of Lampedusa showed at least some Italian military vulnerability. Also, he said, the possibility of Libyan suicide squads picking off Italian targets remains a chilling one.

West Germany, the experts say, is vulnerable in a different way. The West Germans, reportedly among the most active opponents of tough action against Libya at Monday’s meeting of foreign ministers from the European Communities, have a history of condemning any confrontation that escalates global tension.

Geographically, they lie at the forefront of the division between East and West. The relationship with East Germany, extremely important in German domestic politics, is also directly linked to the climate of world affairs.

Apprehension in Bonn

Consequently, even relatively minor fallout from the Libyan affair--Moscow’s cancellation of next month’s meeting between Secretary of State George P. Shultz and Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard A. Shevardnadze, for instance--is received with apprehension.

“We’re hit directly and immediately by any shift in the East-West mood,” noted Josef Thesing, who heads the international wing of the Konrad Adenauer Foundation near Bonn, a political think tank with links to Chancellor Helmut Kohl’s Christian Democratic Union.

In interviews, Thesing and others also noted that Germans viewed the West Berlin discotheque attack as aimed against Americans, not themselves, even though more Germans than Americans were among the more than 200 injured.

“If a German minister or school children were shot by (Libyan) terrorists here tomorrow, you would see a very different kind of government reaction,” said Thesing.

Acting on Their Own

Some European governments, especially those of France and Italy, have believed that they could handle the problem of terrorism on their own through secret negotiations and deals. The French, for example, made a deal with Abu Nidal’s Palestinian terrorist group to release two of its members after three years in prison if Abu Nidal would refrain from any terrorist attacks on French territory during that period.

Abu Nidal stuck to the agreement, and France released the two prisoners last February. But the deal, while sparing France, did not do likewise for other countries in which Abu Nidal has been blamed for bloody massacres.

Also, France, which has been trying in vain to negotiate for the release of eight hostages in Lebanon, discovered far more frustration in trying to work out deals with other terrorist groups.

Diplomatic Front Seen

There appears to be more of a mood in Europe these days, perhaps spurred by the U.S. military action, to form some kind of diplomatic front against terrorism. In a speech to the West German Parliament on Wednesday, Chancellor Kohl called for a unified diplomatic crusade against terrorism.

“If West European nations do not approve of U.S. responses to terrorist threats,” Kohl said, “they must develop effective policies of their own. We must self-critically acknowledge we have not in the past achieved this.”

Times staff writers Tyler Marshall in London, Don Schanche in Rome and Don Cook in Geneva contributed to this article.