French militants who join the fight against U.S.-led forces in Iraq could one day return to strike terror in France and elsewhere, the defense minister warned Thursday in an interview with The Associated Press. The warning followed the detention this week of 11 people in Paris as France's domestic counterterrorism agency moved to break up a network suspected of seeking to funnel young French Muslims to Iraq. Ten suspects remain in custody; one woman was released Wednesday. French officials have said the arrests were aimed partly at ensuring that suspected would-be militants do not receive combat training and experience in Iraq that could make them a threat at home if they survive. "These French citizens who are prepared to carry out suicide attacks in Iraq are people who could one day carry out suicide attacks elsewhere," said Defense Minister Michele Alliot-Marie. "That worries us. There are movements, groups, that can threaten our territory as well as others."Alliot-Marie suggested that some Muslim imams, or prayer leaders, provide the fervor for battle. "A certain number of youths in the movement of some imams receives religious training, until the day when they are moved into the stable of candidates for suicide-bombings," she said. France has been cracking down on imams who preach a radical brand of Islam, expelling at least five last year.
Alliot-Marie said she did not know how many French citizens were involved in the insurgency in Iraq. At least three French Muslims have been killed fighting with insurgents in Iraq. While the number of French-born fighters appears small - perhaps a dozen or more - anti-terror officials in France worry that some of the men of mostly North African descent will return home with combat skills to wage jihad, or holy war.
Alliot-Marie, who has been defense minister for the last two years, is considered a rising star of French politics and media have speculated that she could one day become prime minister - a prospect she declined to comment on. The defense minister spoke to the AP ahead of a Feb. 9-10 meeting of NATO defense ministers in the Riviera city of Nice. Issues such as the alliance's role in Afghanistan and Kosovo and its prospects for training Iraqi soldiers are likely to be discussed there. France "cannot be happy" about continued violence in Iraq, Alliot-Marie said, reiterating France's willingness to train Iraqi police outside the wartorn nation. France was a leading opponent of the U.S.-led war that toppled Saddam Hussein and repeatedly has said it does not plan to send troops there.
Relations between Paris and Washington deteriorated after France expressed opposition to the war. But Alliot-Marie said she has had a frank and "very cordial" relationship with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. "It allows us to have a relationship of trust, even if we do not always agree." She said that President Bush's new administration has "extended its hand" to Paris "and we wish to extend our hand back."
The U.S. State Department said Thursday that Condoleezza Rice, the newly installed U.S. secretary of state, will visit France on a swing through the Middle East and Europe that begins next week - her first foreign trip as the top American diplomat. In other areas, Alliot-Marie said France remains "concerned about seeing Iran have a nuclear program that could lead to a nuclear weapon," but would not give up on diplomatic efforts France leads with Britain and Germany to prevent that from happening. She said France opposes integrating NATO's mission in Afghanistan and a separate U.S.-led coalition searching for remnants of the al-Qaida terror network and the deposed Taliban regime. At a meeting of NATO defense ministers in Romania in October, France and Germany spoke out against U.S. plans to put the alliance in charge of military and reconstruction efforts in Afghanistan. However, U.S. officials said NATO was to develop plans to merge the missions. At the end of its six-month term next month, France is to hand over leadership of NATO's 8,000-strong International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan to Turkey.