Hostage Fiasco Roils France

The 47-day ordeal of two French journalists being held by Iraqi militants generated political discord here Tuesday as the government accused a legislator of endangering the hostages with a failed bid to negotiate their release.

Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin denied allegations that the government had secretly endorsed the efforts by Didier Julia, a maverick congressional deputy with contacts in the former regime of Saddam Hussein.

The confusion has been dubbed the “Julia affair.” It features a mediator who is a for- mer bodyguard-turned-entrepreneur, an African president and a media circus in Damascus last weekend during which Julia announced, erroneously, that the hostages were en route to the Iraqi-Syrian border.

Julia’s bid derailed France’s official negotiations with the Iraqi kidnappers at a crucial moment, Raffarin said Tuesday during a congressional debate.

Julia “undertook a personal initiative without any official mandate,” Raffarin declared. “The government did not approve it and the government does not approve it.”

Julia told journalists Tuesday he had no regrets. The 70-year-old veteran legislator of the center-right ruling coalition discomfited the government before the Iraq war when he and two other legislators went to Baghdad on a peace mission.

Saying their first priority remained the hostages’ safety, opposition leaders asserted that the government had tacitly permitted an amateurish negotiation, then made Julia a scapegoat when it ended in a fiasco.

“There was visibly an attempt by parallel networks,” said legislator Julien Dray, spokesman of the Socialist Party. “That’s not condemnable in itself.... [But] all this was not well coordinated. I also don’t understand the way the lies of the state have multiplied afterward.”

The debate has strained the unity that France displayed after the Aug. 20 abduction south of Baghdad of Georges Malbrunot of Le Figaro and Christian Chesnot of Radio France International.

The kidnappers, calling themselves the Islamic Army of Iraq, demanded that France repeal a ban on the Muslim head scarf in public schools. The ban applies to any conspicuous religious attire. In response, France rallied an array of French Muslims and Arab leaders, including hard-line Islamic figures, to urge the release of the hostages and praise France’s pro-Arab foreign policy.

After that flurry of public diplomacy, diplomats and spies pursued contacts in the Iraqi insurgency in an effort to secure the journalists’ release. Hopes for a speedy resolution reportedly faded because of mixed signals from the kidnappers and uncertainty about their identity.

French leaders have seen a video dated Sept. 22 showing that Malbrunot and Chesnot were alive and well, officials said. Raffarin said Tuesday that negotiations had been advancing well -- until Sept. 28.

Then entered Julia and Philippe Brett, his associate. Brett, a former commando and bodyguard for a leader of the far-right National Front party, has political and business contacts in Iraq that date to the Hussein regime.

Another player joined in: President Laurent Gbagbo of Ivory Coast. He put a private jet at Julia’s disposal, according to news reports, perhaps hoping to curry favor with France, an arbiter in Ivory Coast’s internal strife.

The French Foreign Ministry has acknowledged that it recently helped Julia’s associates gain entry visas to Syria. In a statement Tuesday, the Foreign Ministry said it had decided not to interfere with the congressional deputy’s mission, and that diplomats had little information about it. The French ambassador to Syria met with Julia in Damascus on Friday, as he would meet with any legislator, the Foreign Ministry said.

The public approach of Julia’s negotiators did not bode well for the hostages, analysts said. Brett announced that he had seen the hostages. Last week, he called a radio network in Paris to say he was with the hostages in Iraq. French officials told newspapers that they doubted his claims, partly because intercepted communications placed him in Syria at the time of the call.

“These guys seem to have been really flaky,” said Francois Heisbourg, director of the Foundation for Strategic Research, a think tank in Paris. “Once they started going public, you knew it was not serious. These guys have been playing games with the lives of the hostages. I hope this whole crew was really freelancing and they haven’t destabilized the situation of the hostages.”