PLO Charges Paris Explosions Part of U.s., Zionist Plot

The Palestine Liberation Organization has said the three bomb attacks here this weekend are part of an American and Zionist plot to prepare the way for anti-Palestinian actions by the Israeli secret service in Europe. This weekend explosions damaged the offices of the central Jewish welfare organization of France, the Fonds Social Juif Unifie (FSJU) and two right-wing and often pro-Israeli French newspapers.

The PLO offices here issued a communique today charging that the attacks are a Zionist maneuver to discredit the Palestinians and thereby “to prepare public opinion for a new Israeli aggression against the Arab peoples” in Europe. It said that recent anti-Semitic incidents in the French capital were part of this plot. In particular, the PLO said “the Zionists” were behind the desecration of the memorial to the Jewish martyrs and the anti-Jewish inscriptions in the Paris Jewish quarter.

Meanwhile, French police are continuing to investigate Arab circles in Paris. French police officials say that all clues are being followed. The criminal police were called back from vacation as well as additional numbers of detectives following instructions from Minister of Interior Michel Poniatovsky who reportedly ordered police to “use all means available to them to trace the culprits and bring them to justice.” Foniatovsky, police sources said, told the Paris police commissioner that President Valery Giscard d’Estaing himself has asked to be informed of all possible developments.

URGES ACTION AGAINST RESURGENT ANTI-SEMITISM

A Gaullist deputy expressed concern today over what he termed a “resurgent anti-Semitism” in France and called for immediate police action against this developing tendency. Deputy Pierre-Charles Kreig, acting in his capacity as a member of the Paris City Council, demanded that the central police headquarters in Paris “take immediate and severe measures to quash an anti-Semitism long hidden and now resurgent.”