French Trade Accusations on Cemetery Attack : Desecration: Police investigate vandalism of Jewish graves. Political and religious leaders voice horror.

Leaders of French left- and extreme right-wing political parties accused each other Friday of responsibility for the ghoulish desecration of a historic Jewish cemetery in southern France.

Hundreds of Jewish leaders, anti-racism activists and families with relatives buried at the cemetery in Carpentras, near the city of Avignon, gathered Friday for ceremonies all over France to pray for understanding and condemn the graveyard vandalism.

The French National Assembly suspended its session for 15 minutes to protest the attack. “Nothing can express, with all the force that is needed, our feelings of horror,” said Georges Hage, the Communist Speaker of the lower house of Parliament.

The town council of Carpentras voted to observe five minutes of total silence today.

Prime Minister Michel Rocard, a Protestant, attended the Sabbath service at a synagogue in central Paris to express his sympathy.

According to the police, a group of at least four people, driving two vehicles and carrying crowbars and other heavy tools, systematically desecrated and mutilated 34 graves, marking headstones with swastikas and, in one case, impaling a recently buried corpse on the handle of an umbrella.

Carpentras police inspector Roland Magnet said he received a call from an Arabic-speaking person claiming to represent a group called “Mohammed El Boukina” and taking responsibility for the attack. However, most of the investigation Friday appeared to be focused on right-wing or neo-Nazi organizations.

Police also said they held for questioning a French skinhead, a neo-Nazi extremist, in connection with the incident. The unidentified man was arrested Friday afternoon in Avignon, about 20 miles to the southwest.

“We are proceeding with verifications,” a police officer said. “One must not make hasty conclusions.”

It was the fourth and most serious attack on Jewish cemeteries in France in little more than four years. Jewish leaders, including Nobel peace laureate Elie Wiesel, who left a dinner party opening the Cannes film festival to visit the Carpentras cemetery Friday, said the attack reflected a growing atmosphere of intolerance in France.

“I think there is an unhealthy racist climate in France,” Wiesel said. “It is not new but it is in the process of heating up. It is becoming more and more dangerous. French society must now examine its conscience--and urgently.”

French Interior Minister Pierre Joxe, a member of the ruling Socialist Party, blamed right-wing politician Jean-Marie Le Pen for creating an atmosphere of racism and intolerance that leads to such acts of anti-Semitism.

Joxe said Le Pen, leader of the extreme right-wing National Front party that has been climbing recently in public opinion polls, is a “racist and a provocateur.”

“Like all racists,” Joxe said, “like all those who express their anti-Semitism in an explicit or implicit fashion, he is obviously one of those responsible, not just for the acts at Carpentras, but of all that has been inspired by racial hatred for years.”

Although condemning the attack on the graveyard as “vile,” Le Pen denied that he or his party bore any responsibility for it. Instead, he accused left-wing provocateurs of desecrating the cemetery to give the National Front a bad name.

“It seems more and more that this was a political act against the National Front,” Le Pen told a reporter for the Associated Press near Copenhagen, where he was attending a meeting of European right-wing politicians. “I don’t feel guilty at all in this case. I condemn those who did this and I condemn those who organized this.”

During the past two years, Le Pen has several times been accused of making anti-Semitic statements, including one speech in which he referred to Nazi extermination camps as a minor “detail” of World War II.

After he won 11% of the vote in the first round of the 1988 presidential elections, Le Pen’s National Front declined in popularity, winning only one seat in the 277-member National Assembly.

Recently, however, the National Front has been able to exploit widespread French fears about a growing immigrant population, mostly from North Africa, to build a popular base. A recent national public opinion poll indicated that 17% of the population supports the red-faced, overweight, former paratrooper.

Israel voiced horror at the attack and its ambassador in Paris, Ovadia Soffer, who attended the ceremony at the cemetery Friday, said he believed that Carpentras was deliberately targeted because the French Jewish community there is one of the oldest in France. Jews settled in Carpentras about 1,000 years ago and, when the papacy moved to Avignon from Rome in the 14th Century, their community enjoyed the special protection of the popes.

In Jerusalem, Avi Pazner, spokesman for acting Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, told the British news agency Reuters: “We are horrified by this act of anti-Semitism, which is really a reminder of the blind hatred that we Jews still have to face--not only around us here in Israel but in many places of the world.”

At the graveyard ceremony, Rabbi Jacques Ouaknine said a prayer for victims of the Nazi Holocaust.

“In attacking the mortal envelope of our soul they attack the image of man and of God,” Ouaknine said.

About 50 Jewish demonstrators from the southern port of Marseilles stood outside the cemetery, some of them carrying placards with slogans saying, “We will not let history repeat itself.”

Also present was the widow of Felix Germon. Germon, who died at the age of 81, was buried at the Carpentras cemetery only two weeks ago. Ripped from the grave by the vandals and stripped of clothing, his corpse was then impaled on an umbrella handle and a Star of David implanted on its chest.

“I hope the people who impaled my husband are impaled themselves,” the weeping widow told French television. “He never harmed anyone. He never did anything but be a Jew.”