- PARIS (Reuters) - Fears of
a Christmas Day September 11-style attack eased on Thursday after checks
by French intelligence on passenger lists turned up no terror links on
any of six canceled Air France flights.
-
- A spokeswoman at the French prime minister's office said
no formal inquiry was under way and no arrests had been made in connection
with Wednesday's cancellation of six flights between Paris and Los Angeles.
-
- "We have not detected passengers with the profile
of people belonging to a radical Islamic group," a source close to
French investigating judges that deal with terrorism told Reuters.
-
- "All the checks so far have come to nothing,"
he said.
-
- An Air France spokeswoman said flights to Los Angeles
would resume on Friday as normal. Two flights were due to leave Paris on
Friday -- one at midday, the second an evening flight to Tahiti with a
stopover in Los Angeles.
-
- Two return flights from Los Angeles to Paris were also
to depart as normal, she said.
-
- The source said France's DST counter-intelligence service
checked passenger lists of U.S.-bound Christmas flights after a tip from
U.S. intelligence.
-
- A U.S. official said "credible, reliable" intelligence
reports had been relayed to France saying extremist groups were planning
"near-term simultaneous attacks" that could be on a scale of
the September 11 attacks, which Washington blames on al Qaeda.
-
- The DST questioned a number of people, but found no evidence
of members of radical Islamist groups among them.
-
- The only person named by U.S. Intelligence as a suspect,
a Tunisian man with a pilot's license, was still in Tunisia and had no
apparent plans to leave the country, the source said.
-
- French Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin decided to
cancel the flights in question, even though the DST's checks were negative,
in order to eliminate any trace of risk, he added.
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