| Monday, April 8, 2002 | ||
France is not anti-Semitic - ChiracPARIS, April 8 (Reuters) - French President Jacques Chirac on Monday condemned a wave of attacks on Jewish synagogues and other sites in France, saying the French were not anti-Semitic. His comments, made during a combined interview with four Jewish stations, were followed just hours later by the discovery of an attempted arson attack on a Jewish student union office at Paris's Jussieu University. Three Molotov cocktails were found near the UEJF office, a university official said, adding there had been no fire. "There are undisputedly anti-Semitic acts that are unacceptable and totally contrary to the principles of our republic, and which, I repeat, must be condemned in the most severe and complete terms," Chirac said. "But that does not mean the French are anti-Semitic." Chirac, who is running for re-election in a two-round presidential vote this month and next, was speaking just a day after thousands marched in Paris to express support for Israel but also to protest recent attacks on Jewish sites in France. Concern that the attacks coincide with mounting violence in the Middle East, where Israeli troops have entered Palestinian cities in retaliation for suicide bombings, led Prime Minister Lionel Jospin to call for calm among French Jews and Arabs. At the weekend, firemen rushed to put out a fire in the basement of a Jewish pre-school in Marseille and arsonists threw petrol-filled bottles into a Jewish sports club in the southern city of Toulouse. This follows attacks on synagogues and Jewish cemeteries around the country last week. No one has been hurt. In Strasbourg, eastern France, two men aged in their 20s, were officially placed under investigation on Monday, suspected of placing a homemade bomb in a Jewish cemetery there on Friday. The bomb was discovered before it exploded. Jospin, Chirac's closest rival in the presidential election, in which crime has emerged as a key issue, said on Sunday the Middle East conflict must not be allowed to play itself out within French borders. "If we want to talk about peace in the Middle East, we have to show first that we are capable of living peacefully together at home," Jospin told a rally in Paris. "We cannot accept that horrible passions and antagonism are imported to France." The pro-Israel demonstrations on Sunday were preceded by about a dozen pro-Palestinian marches on Saturday in cities across France. Chirac has been invited to visit Paris's largest mosque on Tuesday to meet senior representatives of the Muslim population and discuss tensions between Muslims and Jews in France. | ||
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