PARIS, Feb 5: French authorities say they are surprised by the extent to which France has apparently become one of the world’s principal rear bases for Muslim extremists.

Police authorities, notably at the Direction de la surveillance du territoire (DST), the French equivalent of the FBI, have in recent days discovered the existence not only of new support networks established in the poor surburbs of Paris, Marseilles and Lyons, but also of what they characterize as “clandestine mosques,” which have played their role in taking young French Muslims off the street, educating them and eventually sending them on to such destinations as the United Kingdom, Afghanistan as well as the United States.

After revelations late last year that some of the extremist movements had been planning attacks on the Eiffel Tower — a plan strangely similar to that of Sept 11 against the World Trade Center in New York — and the US embassy in Paris, the investigators have now brought to light a new plan which would have seen Strasbourg Cathedral bombed during the Christmas 2000 holiday season.

The Cathedral, considered one of the most beautiful examples of early Gothic architecture in the West, was built between the 12th and 15th centuries and measures 142 meters high. Strasbourg, which is located on France’s border with Germany, is also the seat of the European Parliament, and has welcomed in recent years such visitors as Commander Massoud and, more recently, Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, who two weeks ago attempted to use his presence at the European Parliament to attempt to relaunch his country’s talks with Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat.

Revelation of the plans to attack Strasbourg Cathedral by a group of Francophone extremists reportedly close to Al Qaeda came in the wake of the arrest in Germany in December 2000 and April 2001 of several members of one of the groups. The interrogation of those extremists have resulted in the arrest of three other members of the gang who were rounded up on Monday (Feb 4) by the DST which says that all three are presently being detained at DST headquarters in the Tour Nelaton in the 15th arrondisement of Paris.

According to police sources, one of the members is an Algerian national, while his wife is a French citizen, as is a third member of the group.

Although the DST sources refused to provide any more information as to the identities of the three men allegedly linked to Al Qaeda, they did note that their interrogations of the three persons had convinced them that France “would see more terrorist attacks on its soil during the coming months.”

Meanwhile, the French government announced that it had “definitively” identified two of the prisoners at Guanatanamo as being French citizens, and that, in the words of Francois Rivasseau, spokesman for the French Foreign Affairs Ministry, “any other French prisoners whose names have been evoked in the press are not, according to our information, at Guantanamo, and we are attempting to clarify their situation on a case by case basis.”