France the Captain Who Caused a Furor

By JANICE C. SIMPSON

A hush fell over the ornate 19th century French Senate chamber as Charles Pasqua, Senate whip for the neo-Gaullist Rally for the Republic party, stepped up to the rostrum. Shaking one fist in the air and pointing his other hand accusingly at the government's front bench, Pasqua launched into one of the strongest attacks yet against President Francois Mitterrand's four-year-old Socialist government. "If it is proved that the French secret services are | implicated in this affair," he proclaimed, "then the responsibility could not be sought anywhere except at the level of the Premier. Who is to believe that the military can act without orders? France is not a banana republic."

The cause of the uproar was the scandal that has been steadily increasing since the Rainbow Warrior, the flagship of Greenpeace, the 1.5 million-member environmental protest group, was bombed and sunk on July 10 in the harbor of Auckland, New Zealand, killing a Greenpeace photographer. The ship, which was sunk by two bombs attached to its hull, was about to lead a protest against French nuclear tests at Mururoa Atoll, 700 miles southeast of Tahiti. The evidence, trumpeted across the country last week by a French press in full cry, strongly suggests that France's secret service, the Direction Generale de la Securite Exterieure, was responsible for the sabotage.

In Auckland, police confirmed that Sophie and Alain Turenge, the French- speaking couple they arrested, are actually Dominique Prieur, a captain in the DGSE, and an as yet unnamed commander at the French naval commando center in Corsica, where underwater demolition divers are trained. The two are being held on charges of murder, arson and conspiracy. Police are searching for four alleged accomplices. More damaging evidence emerged last week from Politician Bernard Stasi, a member of the centrist opposition who was France's Minister of Overseas Territories in 1973 and 1974. Stasi told reporters that the intelligence agency had begun plotting as long as ten years ago against Greenpeace, which opposes, among other things, nuclear testing and the killing of whales.

In response to the scandal, President Mitterrand appointed Bernard Tricot, 65, a highly respected aide to President Charles de Gaulle 17 years ago, to head an official commission of inquiry. As the accusations and conjectures multiplied, Tricot discreetly interviewed Premier Laurent Fabius, Vice Admiral Pierre Lacoste, head of the DGSE, and other high-ranking government and military officials. Tricot's mission is to find out who sank the Rainbow Warrior and who gave the orders to do it. His eagerly awaited report is expected to be issued this week.

Mitterrand has promised to punish those found responsible, and there is wide speculation that among them will be Defense Minister Charles Hernu, one of Mitterrand's close friends and asso ciates. Hernu, whose ministry has responsibility for the security agency, told journalists last week that his "conscience is clear." He was not, he later told intimates, "even dreaming of the possibility of resigning."

The French widely support their country's nuclear program and have little patience for groups like Greenpeace that oppose it. Thus the public seems concerned less with the bombing than with the bumbling way in which it was carried out. Opposition leaders and newspaper editorials have focused their attacks on the long trail of obvious clues, including the discovery in Auckland harbor of a dinghy and air tanks bearing French markings and commonly used by the French military. "We have legitimate interests in the Pacific," says Jacques Larche, chairman of the Senate laws committee. "The only thing that I reproach about the affair is that it failed."

But the scandal has seriously aggravated France's diplomatic problems in the South Pacific, where the French are unpopular because of both their colonial presence in New Caledonia and their nuclear-testing policy. New Zealand Prime Minister David Lange, whose government earlier this month joined twelve other regional nations in urging a nuclear-free zone in the South Pacific, has called the French tests "deplorable." Lange has promised to sue the French government if its responsibility for the Rainbow Warrior bombing is proved.

In the meantime, Greenpeace is reaping more free publicity than at any other time during its 14-year history. Last week a replacement for the Rainbow Warrior set sail from Amsterdam headed for the Pacific. The new flagship, a converted oceangoing 900-ton tugboat that has been christened the Greenpeace, will rendezvous with other ships to protest French nuclear tests in the South Pacific expected to be held in October. In a sharply worded statement immediately following the ship's departure, Mitterrand vowed to continue testing in the area and to repel all protests "by force if necessary." Greenpeace officials have said that the group would abide by the twelve-mile barrier imposed by France, but New Zealand's Lange was dismayed by the warning. The threat, he said, "reflects the consistent ly insensitive attitude of the French."

With reporting by Jordan Bonfante and Adam Zagorin/Paris