Paris fears 'Algerian war' on home

Leaders vie for political advantage

RATHER than a week of triumph, after one of the most successful and spectacular anti-terrorist operations ever, France is living through days of uncertainty, fearing that the Algerian civil war is finally spilling over into Europe.

After 40 gendarmes stormed the Air France Airbus at Marseilles airport last Monday, killing the four Islamic fundamentalists who hijacked it on Christmas Eve and freeing the 170 passengers and crew, the response was swift. In the Algerian town of Tizi Ouzu the next day, four Catholic priests, three French and one Belgian, were cut down by automatic fire. This brought to 26 the number of French nationals assassinated and to 76 all foreigners killed since the Armed Islamic Group (GIA) declared a campaign to drive foreigners out of the country in September 1993.

The hijacking and the Tizi Ouzu reprisals were headlined by one provincial French newspaper as "the second Algerian war". The French fear it could resemble the first war, the 1954-62 struggle for independence, but transferred to French soil, with murders, bombings and atrocities against both Algerian and French nationals.

Ever since the Algerian government suspended parliamentary elections three years ago because they were on the point of bringing the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) to power, France has been on tenterhooks, fearing violence and a rush of refugees.

When Algiers stopped the elections, French officials at the time said they reckoned the military-backed government had just two years in which to head off civil war. Clearly, that has failed. Taking over the European Union presidency today for the next six months, France can be expected to try to push home to its neighbours its belief that events in Algeria represent perhaps the greatest crisis threatening Europe.

Over the past months, Paris has become irritated because Bonn, holding the EU presidency for the second half of 1994, was concentrating on east Europe and, in French eyes, did not recognise a more immediate danger in North Africa. France has persuaded the EU to give Algeria economic aid in the hope that this would relieve poverty and remove some of the causes of fundamentalism.

While giving military help to a regime which is known for its contempt of human rights, the French now acknowledge that it is too late to hope for peaceful change in Algeria.

The Airbus hijacking pushed the Algerian question into the French presidential campaign, something that, for the moment, is likely to benefit Edouard Balladur, the Gaullist Prime Minister. It was Mr Balladur, backed by Charles Pasqua, his gung-ho Interior Minister, who took the credit for the operation by the black-uniformed commandos of the Groupe d'Intervention de la Gendarmerie Nationale, seeking to give the lie to opponents' theories that the Prime Minister could not handle a crisis.

If as now seems likely Mr Pasqua throws in his lot with Mr Balladur and supports the Prime Minister's candidature to succeed Francois Mitterrand at the Elysee Palace in May, this will bring the main player in France's covert Algeria policy into the campaign.

Since the right won parliamentary elections 21 months ago, Mr Pasqua, maintaining that Algeria represents an internal security problem for France, has opened up channels to the Algerian government and to FIS representatives abroad, at the same time as seeking out FIS arms caches in France. This has put him at loggerheads with Foreign Minister Alain Juppe.

Last week, both ministers were in disagreement again. As soon as the Airbus A300 was hijacked at Algiers' Houari Boumediene airport, Mr Juppe favoured luring the plane to France where the commandos could have a free hand. Mr Pasqua argued that the plane should not be allowed to leave Algiers until the hijackers had been persuaded to release the passengers. For all of Saturday and most of Sunday, Mr Pasqua's view prevailed.

On Sunday night, after the hijackers killed a third passenger - a French embassy cook - Mr Juppe, who feared that a second embassy employee on the Airbus would be next, stepped up his pressure on Mr Balladur to let the aircraft fly to France. Then Mr Balladur called President Liamine Zeroual of Algeria and persuaded him to relent on an earlier decision not to let the Airbus take off.

Fourteen hours after the plane landed at Marseilles' Marignane airport and as dusk fell, the commandos rushed the aircraft. Mr Juppe, however, was denied his share of the glory.

When the operation succeeded, Mr Balladur held a press conference at which only Mr Pasqua was at his side. Mr Juppe, according to diplomats, was not invited. Mr Juppe can expect further such snubs in the coming months. It is the price he has to pay for supporting Jacques Chirac, Mr Balladur's Gaullist rival, for the Elysee.