REPORTER’S NOTEBOOK : Conference on Peace Has Paris Motorists Ready to Go to War

It was supposed to be a summit marking the end of the Cold War, but Paris looked like a city under siege. The three-day meeting of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe opened Monday in a tense melange of pomp and high security that snarled traffic and pushed the short-fused Parisian populace to the verge of explosion.

At times Monday it was difficult to tell which looked more threatening--the lines of heavily armed police or the outraged French citizenry who live and work in the central Paris neighborhoods where most of the summit events are taking place.

Incensed over traffic jams and summit-related security zones accessible only to people bearing special passes, Parisians vented their rage to neighbors, television crews, parking meter police and anyone else who would listen.

Although the French government had worked hard to win the summit for Paris, doctors complained that they were blocked from visiting their patients. Truckers fumed about missing deliveries. Restaurant owners faced empty dining rooms and demanded that the government pick up the tab.

“I’m writing (French President Francois) Mitterrand,” said Michele Plante, 73, owner of Le Cotton Restaurant, not far from the Kleber International Conference Center, where the summit meetings are being held. “In order for our customers to get here, they would have to park 3 kilometers (1.9 miles) away and come by foot. I pay taxes. The government owes me for this. A three-day summit is three days too long.”

With 34 heads of state and government in town for the meetings, the French were taking no chances on the security front. Ten thousand Paris police, gendarmes and military security specialists lined the streets in central Paris near the Kleber Center and outside key hotels and embassies.

Tough-looking Compagnie de Securite Republicaine (CRS) police--including specially trained anti-terrorist brigades outfitted in black flight jackets and paratroop-style jumpsuits--stood outside luxury hotels next to doormen in livery and top hats. Upscale shopping streets such as the Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honore--where Hermes, Yves Saint-Laurent and Gucci all have boutiques--were virtually closed to shoppers who did not have special passes during key hours of the day.

In the ultra-sensitive three-block area surrounding the Kleber Center, not far from the Arc de Triomphe in the stolidly bourgeois 16th District of Paris, subway stations were closed and all traffic halted except for police and official motorcades. Police units even took the precaution of cramming coiled bunches of razor-sharp concertina wire into manholes to block potential routes for terrorists through the famous Paris sewer system.

But while security was extremely taut in some spots, it was surprisingly loose in others.

Reporters attending the signing of the historic conventional arms treaty Monday morning at the Elysee Palace were amazed when guards barely glanced at their credentials, although President Bush, Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and other world leaders were all inside the palace, sitting comfortably under crystal chandeliers and priceless Gobelin tapestries in the ornate Salles des Fetes ballroom.

Even before the summit, traffic and the perpetual Paris traffic jams known as bouchons (literally, “corks”) or embouteillages (“bottlenecks”) were already favorite topics of conversation in the French capital--second only, perhaps, to the traditional French preoccupation with liver problems. But the Parisian’s frustration with traffic has reached a new high with the CSCE summit.

In addition to closed streets, roadblocks and the presence of hundreds of additional police vehicles in the city, the continual high-speed parade of official motorcades on the narrow streets has the city tied in knots. At one point Monday morning, 48 different official motorcades, each with a fleet of security cars and motorcycle escorts, were on the road, klaxons blaring and lights flashing.

In response to the summit gridlock in the capital, an anchorman on one of the French television networks came up with a new meaning for the acronym CSCE. Instead of Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe, he suggested the following French version: Conducteurs Serieusement Coinces dans Embouteillages (“Drivers Seriously Trapped in Traffic Jams”).

Given all the pre-summit hype comparing the event to the 1813-1814 Congress of Vienna and other epoch-changing events, it was nice to see that the literature-loving French hadn’t lost their sense of priorities. Only moments after the historic conventional arms reduction treaty was signed Monday morning at the Elysee Palace, the leading story on Antenne 2, the main state-owned television network, was not the summit but the announcement that the prestigious book award, the Prix Goncourt, had been give to author Jean Rouaud for his novel “Champs d’Honneur” (Fields of Honor).

Before winning instant fame for his novel, Rouaud worked selling newspapers at a corner stand. The novel centers on the lives of a French family that lost many of its members in World War I, which Rouaud, oblivious to the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe, called “the main event of our age.”

Part of the problem in maintaining security at the Paris summit is that with 34 national leaders attending, the number of enemies and potential attackers increases almost exponentially. Nearly every leader has some group or national separatist movement back home that opposes him or her. Nearly all the separatist movements have representatives in France, which prides itself as a haven for political exiles.

Several leaders have multiple opponents. For example, French police are giving special security protection to Turkish President Turgut Ozal, who is opposed by Armenian as well as Kurdish militants. Other world leaders given enhanced security are British Prime Minister Thatcher, the leading target of the Irish Republican Army, and Gorbachev, who may have been the target of a potential assassin in Red Square last week.

An additional police unit was assigned to Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney after police received a tip that French-speaking Mohawk Indians were in town and looking for the Canadian leader’s scalp.

Back home in Quebec, the Mohawks are involved in a bitter, occasionally violent, feud with the Canadian government over land rights and other issues. According to the police tip, a contingent of Mohawks planned to set up camp under Mulroney’s window at the luxury Plaza Athenee hotel on the Avenue Montaigne.

Mulroney spokesman Gilbert Lavoie said Monday that the Canadian delegation was on the lookout but so far had seen no sign of the Mohawks.

President Bush is well known for his fast-paced golf game, but he may have set an all-time speed record of a sort that will win no hearts here: shortest time spent eating dinner at the Elysee Palace, where he dined with President Mitterrand on Sunday night.

Dinner is usually a leisurely ritual at the Elysee, official residence and office of French presidents. Although Bush staffers had set aside a respectable hour-and-a-half for the meal, French spokesman Hubert Vedrine said it concluded after only 45 minutes--a rarity in the French culture, where food is often accompanied by conversation.

The menu has not been disclosed. But the President may have simply been saving room for Thanksgiving, when he and wife Barbara are scheduled to eat a traditional turkey dinner with three different American units stationed in Saudi Arabia.

The world leaders were treated to a more traditional feast Monday at the Elysee. Presidential chefs presented Mitterrand’s guests, including Bush, with a menu of a mousse of scallops accompanied by fresh-water crayfish; grilled Charolais beef with roasted shallots; artichoke heart cooked in olive oil; assorted cheeses, and a rich desert of chestnuts and cream. The wines were a 1985 Burgundy, Beaune Clos des Mouches (about $100 a bottle); a 1978 Bordeaux, Chateau Grand Puy Lacoste ($80 a bottle), and a 1982 Champagne, Louis Pommery ($75 a bottle).

As usual, the menu was reviewed critically by leading chefs and restaurateurs. Jean-Claude Vrinat, owner of Taillevent, a Paris restaurant renowned for its wine list, praised the menu and the first two wines.

He described the Bordeaux as a perfect wine for the beef course. “It’s a wine that lets you go on working after you eat,” he said. “I presume these people needed to work.” However, Vrinat declared himself very disappointed by the choice of Champagne as the dessert wine.

“I just don’t understand it,” he said. “The chestnuts are a very rich dessert. It is an excellent Champagne, but I am afraid it may have been destroyed by the chestnuts. It is very sad.”