Twenty-four hours before the World Cup is to begin here, chaos in the French transport sector, a strike by medical interns, and further arrests of suspected Islamist activists give a whole new meaning to the term "football madness".
There is no sign of an end to the Air France pilots' strike, now in its second week. Only 25 per cent of Air France scheduled flights operated yesterday.
The main pilots' union, the SNPL, had offered at the weekend to transport World Cup ticket-holders free of charge, but the measure was judged illegal because reserving special flights for one category of passengers constitutes a refusal to sell.
The nine-day-old strike has grounded three-quarters of Air France's traffic and already cost more than Ffr 1 billion (£119 million) - more than half of the airline's 1997 profits, its first in seven years. These devastating losses are mounting because the pilots object to a scheme to save nearly £60 million.
Yet 3,200 Air France pilots - "the most selfish in the world", in the words of the economic daily, La Tribune - appear determined to endanger not only the World Cup and their own £100,000-a-year jobs, but those of 43,000 worried, less well paid Air France employees as well.
And if the airline strike were not enough, railway unions have announced a strike tomorrow to coincide with the World Cup kick-off.
Medical interns are refusing to work at night, in protest against long hours and low wages, and Paris policemen have given pickpockets free run of the capital since their cash expenses reimbursement was ended in March.
The French Prime Minister, Mr Lionel Jospin, has said the survival of the national airline is more important than World Cup disruption.
Yet there is an eerie vacuum of responsibility about the strike. No further meetings between the pilots and management have been scheduled, and an extraordinary meeting of the Air France board will not be held until tomorrow or Thursday.
In a mounting war of words, the spokesman for the main pilots' union, Mr Christian Paris, warned that if the Air France chief, Mr Jean-Cyril Spinetta, "imposes a new wage scale during the board meeting, the fracture will be irreversible."
Meanwhile, the Interior Minister, Mr Jean-Pierre Chevenement, announced that nine more suspected Islamic fundamentalists were arrested yesterday morning in France, bringing the total to 64 since May 26th.
French authorities claimed that nearly 100 Islamists detained in co-ordinated sweeps across Europe were plotting to attack the World Cup. But the vast majority have been released without charge.
The Algiers regime, hardly an unbiased source in the matter, has helped plan the operation.
