Hometown Throws Party for Freed French Girls

Two French girls held hostage for 13 months celebrated a belated Christmas on Friday with a party thrown by their hometown.

But public rejoicing was tempered by suggestions that Libyan leader Moammar Kadafi used the children to boost his image.

“This is the end of a nightmare,” Pascal Betille, father of Marie-Laure, 7, and Virginie, 6, told hundreds of people gathered in the public square of Ollioules in southern France. “This is happiness.”

The girls, held by an extremist Palestinian group, were handed over to French officials Thursday in the Libyan capital of Tripoli, six days after Col. Kadafi called for their release.

The children’s mother, Jacqueline Valente, five Belgians and a baby sister born in captivity remain in the hands of Abu Nidal’s Revolutionary Council of Fatah, a hard-line faction that broke with the PLO in 1974 and is now backed by Libya. The group, suspected in numerous cases of terrorism, accused them of spying for Israel.

In Good Health

Doctors at a Marseilles hospital said Friday that the girls were in good physical and psychological health.

The children and their father attended the town party in Ollioules, near the Mediterranean port of Toulon, before leaving for a vacation at an undisclosed location.

The French press welcomed the return of Marie-Laure and Virginie. But it gave equal space to what the conservative daily Le Figaro called “nausea” at the motive for the release.

“At the close of this ignoble drama, . . . there remains an after-taste of bitterness,” Le Figaro wrote. Kadafi “today wants to play the role of Father Christmas.”

The girls’ freedom is widely viewed here as Kadafi’s effort to boost his image at a time when the United States, alleging Libya has a chemical weapons plant, issued threats of a military strike.

“This gesture by the colonel is not gratuitous when, once again the object of American threats, he urgently needs to fine-tune his image as a ‘reasonable’ man of state . . . ,” commented the daily Le Monde.

The press also noted a renewed effort by Libya to improve relations with the European Economic Community, which reduced diplomatic activity with Libya following the U.S. raid on Tripoli in April, 1986.

French officials said no conditions were made for the release of the girls.

The only exchange, Le Monde quoted officials as saying, was allowing Kadafi to make a nice gesture.

‘Gift to France’

The Libyan leader called for the girls’ release on Christmas Eve. Once freed, Fatah-Revolutionary Council, in a statement issued in Beirut, said the girls were a “gift to France” from the children of the year-old Palestinian uprising in the Israeli-occupied territories.

They were taken captive Nov. 8, 1987, when the Silco, a sardine trawler turned yacht, was seized off the Gaza Strip, according to the captors’ announcement.

There have been reports the boat was actually seized off the coast of Libya, highlighting the mystery that has surrounded the hostages from the start.

Le Monde quotes French intelligence sources as suggesting the Belgian hostages may never have left Libya and that the girls may have arrived there long before the official announcement was made Thursday.

The hostages, who have received little public attention over the past year, have been referred to in the French press as the “forgotten hostages.”

The case is considered unrelated to the 16 Westerners, including nine Americans, held hostage in Lebanon by pro-Iranian factions.