Murder of Corsican leader follows French accord

It was the sort of violence that the agreement of the French Prime Minister, Mr Lionel Jospin, with Corsican nationalists was supposed to end.

Jean-Michel Rossi (44), one of the founders of the National Front for the Liberation of Corsica (FLNC) was having coffee with his bodyguard, Jean-Claude Fratacci, on a cafe terrace in Ile-Rousse, northern Corsica, before 9 a.m. yesterday morning.

Five gunmen jumped out of a car and sprayed the cafe with 50 submachine-gun bullets, killing Rossi and Fratacci and slightly wounding a waiter.

It was not clear whether the assassination was for personal revenge or an attempt to sabotage peace negotiations between Mr Jospin and elected Corsican representatives. On July 28th, that process resulted in the acceptance by the Corsican regional assembly of a devolution plan which could allow Corsica to "adapt" laws made in Paris from 2004.

Mr Rossi, who had a degree in sociology, was considered an ideologue of the FLNC, which he co-founded in 1976. He was imprisoned from 1984 until 1989 for bombing a boat belonging to the gendarmerie in Calvi.

He then joined the political wing of the FLNC, A Cuncolta Naziunalista, and edited its weekly newspaper, U Ribombu, during the mid 1990s "civil war" between nationalist leaders. At least 20 separatists were murdered in revenge killings.

After the French prefect in Corsica, Claude Erignac, was murdered in February 1998, Mr Rossi and another leader of A Cuncolta, Mr Francois Santoni, announced they were leaving the group because of its "bullheadedness". Both men served 18 months in prison in 1997-98 in connection with a racketeering case. Although they publicly professed their desire for peace, Mr Rossi and Mr Santoni were widely suspected of involvement with a new armed group, Armata Corsa, created in July 1999.

In a book published two months ago, Rossi and Santoni accused some of their former comrades in A Cuncolta of dealing in drugs and weapons. They revealed details of secret negotiations with the former interior ministers, Mr Charles Pasqua and Mr Jean-Louis Debre.

They also accused Mr JeanGuy Talamoni, the Corsican nationalist politician most prominent in negotiating the Matignon accords, of having close links with the extreme right, in particular with Mr Umberto Bossi of Italy.

The assassination immediately followed an important weekend meeting of 1,000 nationalists at Corte, northern Corsica. More than 10 groups agreed to accept the Matignon accords, but they disagreed on whether it was time to disband armed, clandestine groups, and on the strategy for achieving liberation of "political prisoners" and full independence from France.

The book may have been Rossi's downfall, according to a journalist, Guy Benhamou, who helped edit the text. "Many of his former friends must have felt a lot of resentment, if not hatred, because he described the clandestine nationalist movement as . . . having side-tracked into a kind of armed gangsterism," Benhamou said.

He added: "I spoke to him on the telephone last [Sunday] night. He seemed calm, he didn't seem especially worried. He didn't talk about any veiled threats.