FRANCE CONDEMNED FOR 'COWBOY' HIGH SEAS RAID - PAPER

PARIS - The French Navy's dramatic high seas raid in June of a ship
suspected of smuggling drugs has been attacked by Greek and Spanish
officials for a lack of professionalism, France's Le Monde newspaper said
on Saturday.

The "Winner," a Cambodian-flagged freighter bound for Spain from the
Caribbean, was seized in the Atlantic in an operation ordered by the French
interim right-wing government three days before the decisive second round
of the legislative elections.

French Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin had at the time hailed the
operation "a great success against international drug trafficking."

Le Monde said the French authorities launched the raid without the
cooperation of several countries, including Greece and Spain, which had
been part of an international effort to dismantle drug trafficking between
Europe and Latin America.

The two-hour operation gave crew members time to dump crates of cocaine
overboard, allowing the French Navy to recover only about 80 kilos of
cocaine when the freighter was suspected of carrying up to two tons of the
drug, a Greek anti-drug official named as Rachovistas told Le Monde.

Spain also criticized France's handling of the operation after a Spanish
crew member was injured and evacuated to a hospital in Senegal, where he
died five weeks later.

"We are not at all satisfied by France," Spanish Foreign Ministry spokesman
Fernando Belloso told the paper.

"Even if this man was involved in various illegal activities, there was no
reason to shoot him during a patrol operation, and rather an odd one at that."

Le Monde said controversy over the French operation also arose in France,
where a group of lawyers representing crew members criticized the "cowboy"
seizure of the freighter and the illegality of the crew's 13-day detention.

Lawyers for a Romanian mechanic filed a complaint on Friday for violation
of his freedom and rights.

The prime minister's Matignon Palace, the Foreign Affairs Ministry and the
Defense Ministry all declined to comment, Le Monde said.