PARIS: A collective of several thousand French intellectuals is demanding that candidates in this spring’s French presidential elections “come out of hiding” and take a “firm and clear” stand on the current situation in the Middle East. As of now, the principal candidates for the elections — to be held April 21 and May 5 — have spent little time discussing foreign policy issues and have concentrated their attention on subjects of a domestic nature.

The collective — Capjo — is made up of “(French) citizens of Jewish and Arab origins” and has circulated a petition, signed by thousands of the country’s leading intellectuals, which calls for “a just and immediate peace in the Middle East.”

The collective announced yesterday that it had also sent off a questionnaire to the several candidates running for the French presidency, among them Prime Minister Lionel Jospin and incumbent Jacques Chirac, demanding that they take a “clear and firm” stand on the present conflict in the Middle East.

Among the questions are those asking candidates whether, if elected, they “are ready to respect the (applicable) dispositions of international law ,” as well as “the principles and resolutions of the United Nations, and of the Geneva Conventions.”

The collective was also one of the groups that organised a major demonstration on Thursday in the Montparnasse district of Paris, demanding that “France engage itself more” in the Middle East conflict, that “Chirac and Jospin come out of hiding,” and demanding “international protection for the Palestinian people,” as well as the “cessation of the massacres.”

One speaker accused Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon of undertaking a policy of “apartheid, which is becoming as catastrophic for the Israelis as it is for the Palestinians.”