by Paul Michaud
Paris, January 30 — CIA representatives at the US Embassy in Paris have told their contacts in the French government that they are concerned, indeed angered, over release to the French press Tuesday of a list of six persons whom the CIA alleges to be "probable" French Talibans.

The CIA, which has characterized the leak of the document as a "lack of professionalism" on the part of the French, has gone so far as threaten to reduce its level of cooperation with the French if such future leaks are repeated.

French officials privy with the dispute say they think the CIA is over-reacting as the document in question is not technically the list as provided by the CIA to French authorities in mid-January, but a copy of the same list as circulated within France’s three principal governmental services that deal with terrorism: the Direction generale de la securite exterieure (DGSE, the French equivalent of the CIA), The Direction de la surveillance du territoire (DST, the French equivalent of the FBI), and the Renseignements generaux (RG).

The document in question does not have a letterhead or bear any other identifying characteristics, something which is current practice in France’s secret services, where such documents are simply referred to as "des blancs" and are used to provide basic, usually non-controversial, information to the principal actors in the country’s fight against terrorism.

Although it has not yet issued a comment on the matter, a fourth governmental branch involved in the dispute with the CIA, the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Quai d’Orsay, is known to be flustered as before release of the list to journalists it had not yet had time to contact the families of the six men who are listed, some of whom apparently are among the seven "French Talibans" that US special forces have recently incarcerated at a special security facility at Guantanamo, in the eastern reaches of Cuba.

The men, according to the French version of the list, are: Huwari Mustafa Abd-al-Rahman, Jean-Baptiste Mihoud, Ridouane Khalid, Nizar Sassi, Olivier Jean Christian Marie Joseph Bazart and Khaled ben Mustapha.

Contrary to their counterparts in the other branches of France’s secret services, the Quai d’Orsay is known to regret circulation of the list and has, according to one source, expressed its apologies to the US Embassy in Paris over its release to the press, admitting to one journalist that "the CIA’s anger is understandable because such leaks can prove counterproductive in the common campaign we are mounting against terrorism around the globe."

But, says a source in the Renseignements generaux (RG), the French service which is at the centre of the dispute, "who can say that it was not the CIA which leaked the names in the first place? We are in a very sensitive situation as we have presidential elections coming up this spring, and Washington would apparently like nothing better than to place at the centre of the campaign what they perceive to be France’s lukewarm position on terrorism. But, do they realize that they are in fact exacerbating the problem as we’re already doing all we can to contain the problem of Islamic fundamentalism in France? The more they push, the more the whole thing could boomerang against us."

The source went on to note that France has taken the problem very seriously, but had chosen to handle it in a "confidential manner," although, said the source, "Washington would like nothing better than for us to apply the same open approach to terrorism that they are applying these days to terrorism on a global scale. After Afghanistan yesterday, the Philippines today, and Iraq and Iran tomorrow, will they soon be taking their anti-terrorist campaign to France? What better reason for them to leak their own document to the French press and then attempt to put it on the back of the French government."

Especially as, says the same source, the United States has in recent weeks expressed its concern about the true willingness of the French government to co-operate in its struggle against terrorism. It was a concern expressed to the French during his recent visit to Paris by John Ashcroft, the US Attorney General, who let it be known that he expected for the French to provide a higher level of co-operation with the United States, especially as concerns the involvement of French fundamentalists in Al Quaida in general and the attack on the World Trade Centre in particular.

Already, one French citizen, Zacarias Moussaoui, has been indicted by a US Federal court for his role in the September 11 attacks on the United States.

The French, however, let it be known to Mr. Ashcroft that they were not at all happy with Washington’s decision to select a French citizen to be the first "terrorist" to be indicted by the United States for his "conspiratorial" role in the September 11 attack on New York and Washington. French authorities had let it be known, in no uncertain terms, that they would have expected to have been told beforehand of the indictment — announced December 11 during a highly mediatized press conference — that way to "better prepare" French public opinion in the matter.

As for the "seven" Talibans being held at Guantanamo who are presently receiving the visit of a high-level delegation from the French Foreign Affairs Ministry, all that the Quai d’Orsay is willing to say at the moment, is that "we think that perhaps one or two of them are from France, otherwise we are acting under the presumption that their names were given us by the United States simply because they were heard to speak French."