By Marc Burleigh
Paris - French media and authorities expressed anger on Sunday at an unofficial mission to free two French journalists taken hostage in Iraq more than six weeks ago, which came up empty-handed after promising imminent success.
The operation, headed by a French parliamentary deputy in President Jacques Chirac's ruling UMP party, has sown confusion and raised many questions over government efforts - in public and in secret - to free the two men, Georges Malbrunot of Le Figaro newspaper and Christian Chesnot of Radio France International, who were captured south of Baghdad on August 20 along with their Syrian driver.
Government spokesperson Jean-Francois Cope told Forum Radio J that the mission, "with no links whatsoever to the diplomatic action of our government, is deeply regrettable".
He added: "This type of untimely initiative now has to stop."
Chirac on Saturday slammed the unofficial mission as "interference" while his foreign minister, Michel Barnier, said: "I want to hope that the parallel steps undertaken by a group in Iraq will not have consequences for the safety (of the men) and that they will not delay the moment of their release."
Barnier added darkly: "The moment will come for answers to be given to what has happened."
Newspapers were contemptuous of the mission's instigators: Didier Julia, a 70-year-old UMP deputy who is vice president of an Iraqi-French Friendship Group and an Arabic speaker with ties to the Middle East; and his field man, a 45-year-old former French navy commando named Philippe Brett who belongs to an association that used to have links to ousted Iraqi president Saddam Hussein.
The weekly Journal du Dimanche spoke of an "imbroglio" that was made up of "false leads, lies and confusion", while the daily newspaper Le Monde wrote that the contradictions "give 'Operation Julia' an aura that could be judged ridiculous if it were not a matter of life and death".
Both Julia and Brett had claimed on Friday that they were within hours of securing the release of the reporters. Brett, in a mobile telephone interview with French radio station Europe 1, had even asserted that he was with the two men but did not pass the handset to either of them.
Julia, in the Syrian capital Damascus, later told journalists that a convoy meant to take the hostages out of Iraq had turned back before reaching the Syrian border because the US military had opened fire on it. US officials flatly denied the charge.
Doubts were raised over whether Brett was actually in Iraq. Julia said he met his associate in a Damascus hotel room before dawn on Saturday, despite the fact that the border is closed at night.
Julia left Damascus Sunday and was believed to be heading back to Paris via Lebanon. Asked about his inconsistent assertions and his failed initiative, he told reporters: "My mission as a deputy is never finished."
French media, many of which have been publishing a daily vigil for the hostage journalists, were scathing of Julia's supposed operation - but also at the seeming "impotence" of the government.
They additionally highlighted curious developments that suggested Julia may have had a measure of official support.
Chief among those was the reported involvement of Laurent Gbagbo, the president of the former French colony of Ivory Coast.
Gbagbo's plane was used to transport Julia to Baghdad on September 5, Le Monde reported. Another newspaper, Le Telegramme de Brest, said the plane was again used to fly a Moroccan man carrying a ransom to Amman.
Le Monde said, according to undisclosed sources in Paris, Brett had been a go-between for arms shipments to Ivory Coast, where a civil war broke out two years ago.
It also reported that France's ambassador to Syria, Jean-Francois Girault, held a long meeting with Julia early Friday, before the deputy affirmed that the hostages would soon be freed.
Le Journal du Dimanche speculated that Julia had been manipulated by the Syrian intelligence services as part of a plot by Damascus to punish France for backing a UN resolution condemning Syrian involvement in Lebanon. - Sapa-AFP