PARIS (Reuters) - French Interior Minister Claude Gueant called a meeting of police chiefs on Tuesday to discuss potential security risks as a result of the military operation in Libya, a police source said.
The meeting, the first of its kind since France and other western nations launched air strikes in Libya on Saturday, was called not because of intelligence about specific threats, but because of the Libyan regime's track-record, the source said.
"We know what the Libyans are capable of doing, so we're cautious," the police source told Reuters.
In 1999 a Paris court found six Libyans, including the brother-in-law of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, guilty in absentia for the bombing over Niger of a DC10 operated by French airline UTA in 1989 which killed 170 people.
Other attacks have been attributed to Libya, including the bombing of a Berlin disco in 1986 which killed two U.S. soldiers and a Turk, and the bombing of a Pan Am flight over Scotland in 1988, which killed 270 people.
Gaddafi said on Sunday that he would arm civilians to defend his government and warned that the Mediterranean interests of countries participating in the strikes "faced danger."
Prime Minister Francois Fillon said French intelligence services were mobilised to evaluate possible threats against French interests, but that there was no need to raise the country's level of security alert.
"The risk does not today justify going up a step, but our measures can be adapted in real-time depending on the analysis of the threat," he said during a parliamentary debate on Libya.
France is spearheading the intervention in Libya and so would be a target for any retaliation attacks. It has been on red alert -- the third highest level in a four-step scale of colour-coded alerts -- since the 2005 suicide bomb attacks in London.
(Reporting Thierry Leveque with Nicolas Bertin and Gerard Bon; Writing by Leigh Thomas; Editing by Sonya Hepinstall)