PARIS (AFP) - French officials and media expressed anger 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.
French Justice Minister Dominique Perben accused lawmaker Didier Julia of lacking responsibility, while Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin warned he might have compromised negotiations for the release of the two men.
Julia, a member of Parliament belonging to President Jacques Chirac's governing UMP party, arrived in Beirut Thursday evening and was then driven to Damascus, where he and his staff made a series of claims about the imminent release of the two hostages, journalists Christian Chesnot and Georges Malbrunot, seized with their Syrian driver on August 20.
"We advised (Julia) not to do it but he went ahead anyway," Perben said on French radio.
"Overall the effect has been negative and that is very regrettable. It is a lack of a sense of responsibility of this gentleman."
In a statement Raffarin called for "a sense of responsibility by everyone" and said "all private initiatives" could create "a threat for our fellow countrymen."
Chirac on Saturday slammed the unofficial mission as "interference".
The operation has sown confusion and raised many questions over government efforts -- in public and in secret -- to free the two men.
Newspapers were contemptuous of the mission's instigators: 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.
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 on Saturday 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.
It was unclear where Julia and Brett were on Sunday.
Julia was originally believed to have left Damascus for Paris, but officials in Beirut's airport said he never made the flight to France.
One of Julia's aides said he stayed in Beirut for further contacts, but French diplomatic sources told AFP Julia and Brett were still in Damascus.
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, that 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.