France scrambles to handle GM crop controversy

     PARIS, Aug 27 (Reuters) - France's left-wing government struggled
on Monday to counter high-profile protests against genetically modified 
crops without alienating a wider movement of activists concerned about 
globalisation.

     Reacting to the destruction of a test site for genetically modified
maize on Sunday, the country's health and research ministers urged protesters 
to leave the experimental crops in place because they were needed for medical 
research.

     Confederation Paysanne, the farmers' union led by anti-globalisation 
activist Jose Bove, uprooted two experimental maize fields on Sunday as part 
of a growing campaign against bio-engineered plants.

     The protest came as another anti-globalisation group, Attac, stepped 
up pressure on the government to adopt a tax on global foreign exchange 
transactions to reduce Third World debt, a step Finance Minister Laurent 
Fabius has rejected as impractical.

     "We have to have a discussion, but we can't accept reactions that
are against progress," said Health Minister Bernard Kouchner, adding the 
protests seemed motivated by fears that he did not understand about science.

     "It is not acceptable when someone destroys a field aimed at a
treatment for cystic fibrosis," he told Europe 1 radio.

     Research Minister Roger-Gerard Schwartzenberg deplored the destruction 
of GM crop experiments as a step backwards in the quest for more information.

     "There are perhaps possible risks for health and the environment,
but this is exactly what these tests are trying to verify," Schwartzenberg 
said in a television interview.

     Dealing with the anti-globalisation movement has become a key issue
for Socialist Prime Minister Lionel Jospin, who needs to rally support among 
the many currents of the French left if he is to beat President Jacques Chirac in
elections next year.

     His Greens party coalition partners complicated the task when their
leader, Dominique Voynet, sided with the protesters.

     "I understand them. (Their actions are) undoubtedly resulting from
the ambiguous attitude of the government," said Voynet, who stepped down 
as environment minister in July to lead the Greens through presidential 
and legislative polls in 2002.

     Her successor at the Environment Ministry, fellow Green Yves
Cochet, last week described the campaigners' actions as illegal but said 
they raised a legitimate issue that had to be debated.

     The daily Le Monde said the anti-globalisation issue challenged
Jospin with a "curious cocktail" of problems at a time when other headaches 
such as slowing economic growth have appeared to darken the political horizon.

     The campaign to destroy GM crops sprang up earlier this year when
the Agriculture Ministry published a list of 100 districts where genetically 
engineered plant trials were being conducted.

     Sunday's protest marked the fifth time that French protest groups
have destroyed GM crops since late June.