While President Jacques Chirac's own opposition to the US-led invasion has helped defuse tensions inside France -- he has the support of some 90 percent of the population -- the authorities fear that a long war and a high casualty count will inflame passions among the country's five million Muslims.

Among the warning signs is the growing amount of anti-US and anti-Jewish graffiti appearing on walls in the poor banlieus -- suburbs of the big cities -- as well as the influence of large Arab contingents at anti-war demonstrations bearing posters and slogans in support of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.

Last Thursday unknown vandals defaced a British World War I cemetery in northern France with a swastika and graffiti telling Britain to "dig up its garbage which is fouling our soil," and a few days before that a group of Jewish left-wingers were beaten up with iron bars at an anti-war march in Paris.

"The increasing anti-American feeling in the banlieu estates could quickly become a real worry," said a highly-placed official at the interior ministry in an interview with Le Figaro newspaper Wednesday.

"Media coverage of allied blunders in Iraq feeds a form of arrogance which police on the ground are now seeing every day. It would take only a spark for the anti-Americanism to feed into uncontrolled forms of violence," he said.

The government appears to have been taken aback by a poll in Le Monde newspaper Tuesday which showed that as many as a third of the French public actively want the US and Britain to lose the war in Iraq. Only just over a half wanted them to win.

While Chirac has not spoken out for some days, Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin sought to rein in popular sentiment Tuesday -- reminding France "not to choose the wrong enemy."

"We believe this war was a bad choice... But the Americans are not our enemies. Being against the war does not mean that we want dictatorship to triumph over democracy. Our camp is the camp of democracy," he said.

A close aide to Chirac meanwhile told AFP: "How do you think we could wish for anything other than the defeat of Saddam Hussein and victory for the Americans, even if we did disagree with them over the appropriateness of a military intervention?"

The French government has till now refrained from unequivocal expressions of support for the US-British force -- which it believes is conducting an illegal war -- and the remarks appeared to reflect anxiety that anti-US feeling could be getting out of control.

Concern about the reaction of the country's large Arab population -- mainly made up of immigrants from North Africa -- has played a large part in France's opposition to the war, which the government believes will destabilise the Middle East and radicalise Arab opinion.

Anti-terrorist officials have long warned that a conflict will increase recruitment to extremist Islamic groups, already in existence in France and elsewhere in Europe, which are now likely to be identifying targets for bomb, chemical weapon or suicide attacks.

Because of Chirac's opposition to the war French targets are unlikely to be singled out, but US symbols are vulnerable, officials believe, and security has been stepped up not just at the US embassy in Paris but also at Disneyland east of the capital and even some English-language bookshops.

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