- A junior French minister has indirectly confirmed that
French and US fighter jets have been tracking passenger planes amid heightened
security.
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- His comments came as France accused the FBI of making
mistakes over identifying "suspicious" names on passenger lists.
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- Concerns over the passengers led to the halting of six
flights between Paris and Los Angeles at Christmas.
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- Reports said one of the US-identified "suspects"
was in fact a child and another was a Welsh insurance salesman.
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- Junior Transport Minister Dominique Bussereau confirmed
reports that US fighter jets escorted two Air France flights into Los Angeles
earlier this week.
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- "Currently, the air bases of the countries concerned
are on a high state of alert, and it's not unthinkable for civilian aircraft
to be followed at a distance by military jets," Mr Bussereau told
French radio.
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- "That has been the case in the United States."
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- Using military escorts was "part of a raft of security
measures that can be implemented at any moment, even if there is no specific
threat to a particular flight", he said.
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- Newspaper reports, quoting witnesses, said the jets escorted
the planes on Tuesday and Wednesday.
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- Mr Bussereau also strongly suggested that rumours of
French military escorts for some passenger planes were also true.
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- "There can be French planes that are near passenger
jets," he said.
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- "It happens all the time... In periods of maximum
security, this kind of procedure is common."
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- But France confirmed that particular fears about Paris-Los
Angeles flights, which led to six cancellations, were groundless.
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- "A check was carried out in each case and in each
case it turned out to be negative," a spokesman for the Interior Minister
told AFP.
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- "The FBI worked with family names and some family
names sound alike."
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- "The difficulty is compounded when you have no first
name or date of birth," he said.
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- Newspaper report
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- A report in Friday's edition of the Wall Street Journal
said a child was among the passengers singled out, because its name was
similar to that of a wanted Tunisian.
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- The other "suspects" turned out to be an elderly
Chinese ex-restaurateur, a Welsh insurance salesman and three French nationals,
the paper alleged.
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- French news agency AFP quoted an unnamed FBI official
as confirming that it was a case of mistaken identity.
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- "Sometimes, it's not until you physically ID a person
you find out it is not the person," the official was quoted as saying.
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- The agency told the BBC it had no comment and had not
spoken to AFP.
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- Mr Bussereau also revealed that at least one flight which
the US authorities had concerns about had been authorised by France.
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- "We thought that all security measures had been
taken, that the verifications of passengers had been such that this flight
had every reason to fly," he said.
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- Strict security measures are in operation at French airports
amid international fears of an increased terror threat.
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- French Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy was visiting
Charles de Gaulle airport on Friday to witness security procedures for
himself.
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- Amid a continuing US clampdown, British Airways again
cancelled one of its three daily passenger flights from London to Washington
on Friday, following a similar move on Thursday.
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- And Aeromexico's daily flight from Mexico City to Los
Angeles was also cancelled for two days running.
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- © BBC MMIV
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- http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/3363723.stm
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