France Also Suspects Syria of Terror--but Keeps Quiet

The British rupture of relations with Syria has embarrassed and exposed a French government that has said and done nothing in public to Syria despite the widespread conviction here that Syrian agents had a hand in the wave of bombings that terrified Paris during September.

In the only French official reaction to the dramatic break in London, Minister for External Relations Jean-Bernard Raimond, commenting on France’s own treatment of Syria, said: “An accusation against a foreign power must be based on proof. When we have proof, we will see where we are.”

Newspaper editorialists, however, predicted that the action against Syria by British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher would put domestic pressure on the government of President Francois Mitterrand and Premier Jacques Chirac to chastise or punish the regime of Syrian President Hafez Assad in some way.

In an editorial Saturday in the Paris newspaper Liberation, Deputy Editor Gerard Dupuy wrote, “Long familiarity with the Arab Mediterranean, especially Lebanon, naturally inclines French decision-makers to prudence and compromise. But the attempt to sympathize with 10 countries at war with each other is becoming more and more problematic. Maggie’s blow against Assad has created a problem for French domestic politics.”

There has been a good deal of confusion within France about the exact nature of French relations with Syria now. Newspapers, for example, have reported that France was negotiating a deal to sell arms to Assad, a deal that sounded like an attempt by France to bribe Syria to keep terrorists in line. But the French government has denied any such negotiations.

Government officials, however, have not been questioned closely on this issue, perhaps because the wave of bombings came to an abrupt end Sept. 17 after killing 10 people and wounding more than 150. In short, the government’s overtures to Syria, whatever they were, seemed to be accomplishing at least a truce.

In public, French government officials have denied that they have any evidence connecting Syrians or any other foreign agents to the bombings in Paris. “Nothing permits us to implicate a foreign state in these attacks,” Premier Chirac told the National Assembly on Oct. 8. “We must judge on the basis of proof and not of suspicions.”

Most French newspapers have treated these comments as double talk to cover the fact that France, while it knows that Syria was involved, feels it best not to say so publicly.

In fact, despite these comments by Chirac, the government has implied very strongly in public that Syrian agents helped the bombing suspects flee France after the wave of attacks. French police believe that the terrorists were brothers and cousins of Georges Ibrahim Abdallah, a Lebanese imprisoned in France and charged with the killing of an American military attache and an Israeli diplomat in 1984. All the suspects, however, showed up in northern Lebanon after their photos were posted by police in France.

Using some intelligence agency jargon, Minister of Cooperation Michel Aurillac, who rushed to Damascus on a secret mission after the bombings, told the French press later: “We know that the Abdallah brothers were ‘exfiltrated’ from France by professional secret agents. And we have taken notice that they held their news conference in Lebanon in a region controlled by Syria.”

In private, government officials hint about two complications that make it difficult for France to speak out against Syria.

First, the officials talk vaguely about the possibility of the involvement in the Paris bombings of foreigners who were not under the control of a foreign government. If the terrorists were only loosely linked to Syria, the newspaper Liberation pointed out in an article Saturday, the French government could insist that support rather than punishment for Assad would strengthen him against his wildcat agents.

In addition, officials talk about the need to avoid government acts that endanger the lives of the seven French hostages believed held by extremist Shia Muslim groups in Lebanon. “France remains paralyzed by the affair of the hostages,” wrote Francois Luizet in the Paris newspaper Le Figaro on Saturday. “Damascus is one of the keys (with Iran among others) that can allow the liberation of our compatriots detained in Lebanon.”

Syria has close relations with the Iranian government, which is believed to influence and support the Lebanese Shias. Syrian pressure on Iran could be the price that the French want Assad to pay if they are really planning, as the French press reports, to sell arms to Syria.

The French have long prided themselves on their complex and subtle ways of dealing with the machinations and mazes of Middle Eastern politics, even when that has involved negotiations with terrorists. The trouble for the French government, from a political point of view, is that all these obscure maneuvers look rather feeble when compared to Prime Minister Thatcher’s punishment of Syria for a role in the El Al bombing case that is not much greater than what many French suspect was Syria’s role in the Paris bombings.