Syrian President Bashar al-Assad was a guest of honour at France's annual Bastille Day military parade on Monday, sparking a small protest and adding to tensions at the march over job cuts in the armed forces.
Assad, marking a rehabilitation with the West, joined a host of leaders in central Paris for the annual military review, which followed the launch of President Nicolas Sarkozy's Mediterranean Union project on Sunday.
But his presence angered some army veterans, who suspect Syria played a role in a 1983 massacre of French troops in Lebanon, and was also denounced by human rights groups. Rights group Reporters Without Borders (RSF) said eight of its activists were arrested near the parade when they protested against Assad, who was in the front row of the reviewing stand.
"Sadly, the reasons for these arrests are obvious. They wanted to avoid any trouble," RSF spokesman Benoit Hervieu said, adding that the police moved in after the group unrolled a banner which branded Assad as a "predator".
There had been speculation that marching soldiers too could protest because of Assad, and also an overhaul of defence strategy in which around a quarter of military personnel are due to be cut, but the parade went off as planned. "The armed forces put on a remarkable display," Sarkozy told France 2 television shortly after the parade, which began with jets roaring overhead and ended with a group parachute jump.
This year's graduates from the elite Saint-Cyr military academy took part in the march and named their group "Antoine de la Batie" in memory of an officer who died in the 1983 Lebanese truck bomb that killed 58 French troops.
In a bid to ease tensions, a senior official at Sarkozy's office said on Sunday that Hezbollah Islamists and Iran, not Syria, were to blame for the attack. Sarkozy's office said 35 foreign national leaders attended Monday's parade, including German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.
As on Sunday, Assad studiously avoided Olmert in the leaders' reviewing stand. France's defence minister warned soldiers ahead of the parade that there was a limit to their freedom of expression. Several generals have anonymously denounced the government's plan to slash roughly a quarter of all military personnel as part of an overhaul of defence strategy.
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