Officials Hope Arrest of Carlos Sends Message : Mideast: Capture may have little effect on terrorist acts. But it could pressure nations harboring extremists.

Although the arrest of Carlos the Jackal is unlikely to affect international terrorism directly, American counterterrorism officials said Monday that they hope the capture of the infamous terrorist will send a message to extremists around the world.

“We hope they understand that the international community does not forget,” a senior U.S. official said. “However long it takes, they will be brought to justice.”

Since the wave of anti-U.S. terrorist attacks in the 1980s, both Republican and Democratic administrations have more actively promoted law-and-order responses to terrorism, including new laws giving American agencies power to go beyond the nation’s borders.

But few foreign extremists actually have been caught or extradited for trial in the United States or other Western countries.

Sudan’s decision to turn Carlos over to France could be a boost to Western efforts to squeeze countries that harbor terrorist groups.

It is unlikely, however, to remove a major player from the terrorism scene.

“This guy’s been out of business since the early 1980s. He’s a terrorist emeritus,” a counterterrorism expert said. “Despite his notoriety, he was probably credited with three times the number of operations he ever really undertook. There are contemporary terrorists who are of much more concern to us.”

Indeed, Israeli officials denied that Carlos played a role in several of the most notorious acts with which he is associated. The officials also refused to comment on speculation that Israel might ask France to extradite Carlos for trial in Israel.

Shlomo Gazit, former head of Israeli military intelligence, said Monday that Carlos was not involved in either the 1972 Munich massacre of 11 Israeli athletes or the 1976 hijacking of an Air France plane to Entebbe, Uganda.

American and Egyptian officials speculated Monday that Sudan, which has been on the State Department’s terrorism list since August, 1993, decided to hand Carlos over to France because the terrorist is now expendable and because of potential good publicity.

Sudan has been an international outcast since shortly after the 1989 coup that brought to power the hard-line Islamic government of Omar Bashir, primarily because of allegations that it supported international terrorism.

Groups such as Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Hamas have offices in Khartoum. Agents of Palestinian renegade Abu Nidal are said to have operated in the capital.

The government has also repeatedly been accused, with little concrete evidence, of operating terrorist training camps, primarily for Sunni fundamentalist groups challenging governments in neighboring Algeria, Tunisia and especially Egypt.

Sudan, cut off almost entirely from international aid and going bankrupt in the process, has been eager to make amends with the West and get money flowing again.

As a figure of the past, Carlos does not have strong ties with active movements, eliminating the danger of retaliation.

“This was a winner for the Sudanese,” the U.S. official said. “Carlos is not someone with ties. He’s out of the old sectarian school that isn’t terribly active now so no one is likely to complain that he’s been turned over. And they’ll get good publicity which they can desperately use. So there’s no down side.”

But while welcoming Sudan’s decision, sources in Washington said the Khartoum government knew the action was not sufficient to win its removal from the American terrorist list.

Counterterrorism officials said it is unclear whether Syria, which had played host to Carlos since he was expelled from Hungary in the late 1980s, had decided to kick him out. He was in Sudan for about six months, U.S. officials said.

Because Syria has also been anxious to get off the terrorist list, U.S. officials said they believe Damascus would have wanted credit for expelling Carlos.

But in the context of revived U.S.-led peace efforts, the sources speculated, Syria may have made life difficult for Carlos to force him to leave.

It was not the first time he left the country. Carlos reportedly went to Yemen in the early 1990s. Libya is also believed to have turned him away in 1991 after a purported eviction from Damascus. He also reportedly obtained a passport for his second daughter from the Venezuelan Embassy in Beirut.

But U.S. officials said they considered Syria his primary residence until recently. He probably went to Sudan because there was nowhere else to go.

Times staff writer Mary Curtius in Jerusalem contributed to this report.