January 31, 2002	Thursday	Ziqa’ad 16, 1422

PARIS: 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 overreacting 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 Direction de la surveillance du territoire (DST), and the Renseignements generaux (RG).

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 bin 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.”

One French citizen, Zacarias Moussaoui, has been indicted by a US federal court for his role in the Sept 11 attacks on the US. The French let it be known to A