Rainbow Warrior claims a smear, says Segolene Royal

Segolene Royal

PARIS - The Rainbow Warrior saga has leapt into France's election campaign, with leading Socialist candidate Segolene Royal suggesting a report that named her brother as the bomber of the Greenpeace flagship could be part of a smear campaign.

"I am rather surprised by this controversy, which arose just after I announced my candidacy," said Royal. "I don't know if this is coincidence. I don't know whether it's justified or if it's a banana skin. If there are things to say ... let the Defence Ministry say them. That will avoid all presumptions and insinuations."

Royal's younger brother Antoine told the Parisien that Gerard Royal had told him that he planted the bombs that sent the Rainbow Warrior to the bottom of Auckland Harbour in July 1985. It is the first time that a suspected member of the so-called third team of French secret service operatives, which succeeded in fleeing New Zealand, has been publicly identified.

News agency AFP, quoting a "specialist" who knew the operatives, said Gerard Royal was a member of the third team but had not planted the bomb. The source said Royal had been the pilot of the Zodiac inflatable that had dropped off two divers to affix the limpet mines to the vessel and picked them up afterwards.

Segolene Royal said that she had learned "several years ago" that her brother was a combat diver with the French foreign intelligence agency DGSE. "I have much admiration for my brother, who was a great soldier."

Royal did not elaborate as to who could be behind any smear. If it is true, the finger of suspicion could point at the conservatives, just as much as at her own rivals in the Socialist Party. The timing is curious, because the 200,000 members of the Socialist Party are due to vote on November 16 on who should be the party's candidate in the bid to succeed President Jacques Chirac next April and May.

The Rainbow Warrior affair is recalled by many Socialist militants with anger and dismay, as the moral nadir of the 1981-95 presidency of Francois Mitterrand, so to revive memories of it is to convey guilt by association.

Royal's main Socialist rival, Laurent Fabius - who was Prime Minister at the time of the Rainbow Warrior affair but has always insisted on his innocence - said the disclosure was timed to damage both Royal and possibly himself. Speaking sarcastically, Fabius said: "It must be pure coincidence, total fluke ... for people to dig up this story which happened 20 years ago and which tars the reputation of [Royal] when she is putting her name forward ... and perhaps me too, given that I am also a candidate. I don't believe in gutter politics, and if they want to stop the Socialists like that, it won't work."

Former Economy and Finance Minister Dominique Strauss-Kahn was rather more nuanced, describing the controversy as "misplaced" and saying that "no one is responsible for what his brother, father or sister does".

Royal's supporters characterise Strauss-Kahn and Fabius as heading the party's male-dominated old guard, which has fought a bitter closed-doors battle against her rise. The party last occupied the presidency in 1995 under Mitterrand and has been in Opposition in Parliament since 2002.

Family fallout

Bitter jealousies are stirring within the Socialist Party. Knives are out, in particular, for party leader Segolene Royal's partner Francois Hollande.

Former Education Minister, Claude Allegre, a close friend of former Socialist Prime Minister, Lionel Jospin, accused Hollande of manipulating, and then losing control, of Royal's candidature. Hollande had tried a "trick billiards' shot" by encouraging her to run but had "got his feet caught in the carpet".

Allegre claimed that Hollande had told him that he expected Royal's popularity to collapse. Her success has wrecked Hollande's own chances as a candidate. And as leader, he is squeezed between his partner and the other candidates.

He told journalists, only half-jokingly, that he was "living through a tragedy".

- additional reporting: INDEPENDENT