Police Find Explosives in Forest Outside Paris

The police, who have been hunting for terrorist bombers, announced Monday that they have uncovered 30 pounds of explosives, 30 detonators and an automatic pistol hidden in a forest 85 miles east of Paris.

But they refused to say whether they believe the find is related to terrorists who have unnerved Paris with a series of bombings that have killed eight people and wounded more than 170 others since Sept. 8.

A 25-year-old Iranian was arrested and charged with association with criminals and illegal possession of the explosives, which were found over the weekend in a forest near the city of Reims.

It was the second such cache found in less than a week. The police, again without making it clear whether there was any link to the Paris terrorism, announced last Wednesday that they had uncovered an even larger cache of explosives at Fontainebleau, 40 miles from Paris.

Meanwhile, a good deal of anxiety persisted in Paris despite the passage of a fifth straight day without a bomb explosion. At the Grand Palais museum, for example, museum personnel went on strike, protesting that security guards were not doing a good enough job of searching visitors. The galleries were then closed.

Elsewhere, about 1,000 followers of Jean-Marie Le Pen’s extreme-right National Front gathered in the Place de l’Opera to demonstrate “against terrorism and in favor of public security.”

Paris police had prohibited the demonstration, maintaining that it would distract police officers from hunting for the terrorists. But the National Front, which has won representation in the National Assembly on an anti-immigration and pro-law-and-order platform, insisted that the demonstration would not cause any trouble for the police.

Dominique Chaboche, vice president of the National Front, said his organization only wanted to protest “the showy half-measures of the government against terrorism.”

Le Pen, however, canceled plans for a march through downtown Paris and limited the demonstration to speechmaking at the Place de l’Opera. The few policemen present did not interfere.

French police were sticking to their theory that the wave of bombings was caused by the brothers and associates of Georges Ibrahim Abdallah, a 35-year-old Lebanese imprisoned in France on charges of illegally possessing guns and false documents. Abdallah is believed to be the leader of an organization known as the Lebanese Revolutionary Armed Faction that has boasted of killing an American military attache and an Israeli diplomat in Paris four years ago.

But the four brothers have come forward in their hometown in northern Lebanon to deny any involvement in the bombings. French police, however, insist that this was only a theatrical gesture by terrorists who did their killing in Paris and then rushed home to Lebanon to show themselves off at news conferences.

Premier Jacques Chirac, who is also the mayor of Paris, opened a meeting of the Paris City Council on Monday with a minute of silence in memory of the victims of the bombings.

Earlier, speaking in English from France on NBC’s “Today” show in the United States, Chirac said: “We will not accept to be blackmailed. . . . We are not at all afraid, and we know we are going to win against terrorism.”