October 5th/6th.
‘On the contrary,’ the statement continued, ‘the incident was clearly a desperate attempt by Palestinian terrorists to block progress towards a détente between Israel and Egypt.’
Israel endorsed the call for a meeting of the Security Council and censured France for initiating the supply of nuclear weapons to the Middle East.
World opinion appeared to attach little credence to theIsraeli counter-charge which Yasir Arafat had quickly repudiated on behalf of the PLO in particular and the Palestine liberation movement in general. Indeed, there was widespread agreement that the Israelis had been responsible for the attack on Beirut Port.
In Washington, the President announced that France’s action in supplying nuclear weapons to Syria would compel the United States to consider making such weapons available to Israel in order to maintain the balance of power. ‘Nothing is more likely to provoke aggression,’ said the President, ‘than the knowledge that you have a nuclear capability and your opponent has not.’
The British Government, with characteristic phlegm, urged calmness and caution, stressing that everything possible should be done to preclude a nuclear build-up in the Middle East. It supported the Soviet Union’s call for a meeting of the Security Council knowing, as did the other Governments concerned, that France would veto any resolution critical of her policy.
On October 14th Le Monde announced that its correspondent in Beirut, Pierre Gamin, had been arrested by Lebanese security police on October 7th and held incommunicado ever since. The paper recalled that Gamin had, on the day of his arrest, telephoned a report of the incident of 5th/6th October and that it was he who had first revealed that France had supplied the consignment now known to be nuclear arms. Le Monde urged the French Government to exert pressure to secure his release. ‘He has committed no crime,’ wrote its editor, ‘unless truth itself be a crime.’
Which excellent point was unlikely to carry much weight with the French Government, considering how angry it was with Pierre Gamin.
Three days after the Leros arrived in the Piraeus, the bearded man with the scarred neck walked out of the Attica PalaceHotel and set off on foot for Constitution Square. It was almost eleven o’clock and the sun was well up in a cloudless sky. When he reached the Square he sat at a table drinking coffee, watching the passers-by. He was early and it was pleasant sitting there basking in the sun. With much tension behind him, and more to come, he found it curiously soothing ; the patches of shade cast by lemon, casuarina and cypress trees, the sponge sellers, curio and lottery-ticket pedlars, and the bustle of people and traffic.
But mostly he watched the steps which led down from the Square’s eastern end, where the Parliament building loomed solid and rectangular. He was doing this when he heard Kemal Tarshe’s, ‘Hullo, Zeid.’
Kemal Tarshe, a slight man with large eyes, ran Dimitri Ionides and Co., the shipping and forwarding business his wife Cleo had inherited from her father. It was a small firm. The staff consisted of Kemal and his wife and two Greek typists, one of them a woman who had spent most of her working life with the firm. Tarshe, a Palestinian, had settled in Athens soon after his marriage in 1974. His wife knew he’d been a member of El Fatah, the militant arm of the PLO, but she did not know he had been, and still was, a member of SAS – Soukour-al-Sahra’, the Desert Hawks.
He pointed to a chair. ‘Sit down, Kemal. It’s good to see you again. You gave me quite a fright. I thought you would come down the steps.’ He and Kemal were old friends. They’d been at school and university together in Beirut.
The new arrival rubbed his hands and grinned. ‘I was seeing how alert you were, Zeid.’
‘I’m off duty. You wouldn’t have caught me like that at any other time.’ He beckoned to
‘On the contrary,’ the statement continued, ‘the incident was clearly a desperate attempt by Palestinian terrorists to block progress towards a détente between Israel and Egypt.’
Israel endorsed the call for a meeting of the Security Council and censured France for initiating the supply of nuclear weapons to the Middle East.
World opinion appeared to attach little credence to theIsraeli counter-charge which Yasir Arafat had quickly repudiated on behalf of the PLO in particular and the Palestine liberation movement in general. Indeed, there was widespread agreement that the Israelis had been responsible for the attack on Beirut Port.
In Washington, the President announced that France’s action in supplying nuclear weapons to Syria would compel the United States to consider making such weapons available to Israel in order to maintain the balance of power. ‘Nothing is more likely to provoke aggression,’ said the President, ‘than the knowledge that you have a nuclear capability and your opponent has not.’
The British Government, with characteristic phlegm, urged calmness and caution, stressing that everything possible should be done to preclude a nuclear build-up in the Middle East. It supported the Soviet Union’s call for a meeting of the Security Council knowing, as did the other Governments concerned, that France would veto any resolution critical of her policy.
On October 14th Le Monde announced that its correspondent in Beirut, Pierre Gamin, had been arrested by Lebanese security police on October 7th and held incommunicado ever since. The paper recalled that Gamin had, on the day of his arrest, telephoned a report of the incident of 5th/6th October and that it was he who had first revealed that France had supplied the consignment now known to be nuclear arms. Le Monde urged the French Government to exert pressure to secure his release. ‘He has committed no crime,’ wrote its editor, ‘unless truth itself be a crime.’
Which excellent point was unlikely to carry much weight with the French Government, considering how angry it was with Pierre Gamin.
Three days after the Leros arrived in the Piraeus, the bearded man with the scarred neck walked out of the Attica PalaceHotel and set off on foot for Constitution Square. It was almost eleven o’clock and the sun was well up in a cloudless sky. When he reached the Square he sat at a table drinking coffee, watching the passers-by. He was early and it was pleasant sitting there basking in the sun. With much tension behind him, and more to come, he found it curiously soothing ; the patches of shade cast by lemon, casuarina and cypress trees, the sponge sellers, curio and lottery-ticket pedlars, and the bustle of people and traffic.
But mostly he watched the steps which led down from the Square’s eastern end, where the Parliament building loomed solid and rectangular. He was doing this when he heard Kemal Tarshe’s, ‘Hullo, Zeid.’
Kemal Tarshe, a slight man with large eyes, ran Dimitri Ionides and Co., the shipping and forwarding business his wife Cleo had inherited from her father. It was a small firm. The staff consisted of Kemal and his wife and two Greek typists, one of them a woman who had spent most of her working life with the firm. Tarshe, a Palestinian, had settled in Athens soon after his marriage in 1974. His wife knew he’d been a member of El Fatah, the militant arm of the PLO, but she did not know he had been, and still was, a member of SAS – Soukour-al-Sahra’, the Desert Hawks.
He pointed to a chair. ‘Sit down, Kemal. It’s good to see you again. You gave me quite a fright. I thought you would come down the steps.’ He and Kemal were old friends. They’d been at school and university together in Beirut.
The new arrival rubbed his hands and grinned. ‘I was seeing how alert you were, Zeid.’
‘I’m off duty. You wouldn’t have caught me like that at any other time.’ He beckoned to
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