PARIS – As France bowed its head in official mourning Friday for 130 people killed by terrorists, it also braced for the challenge of hosting nearly 150 world leaders who will begin arriving this weekend for a critical global summit on the environment.
The events, separated by two weeks of shock and grief, create a stark juxtaposition between the immediate danger of terrorism and the longer-term existential threat of climate change. They also contrast what many see as a dearth of security leading up to the terrorist attacks and the massive precautions surrounding the climate conference.
The UN-sponsored summit is sure to add to the strain on security forces that have already been pushed to the limit by an investigation of the Nov. 13 Paris attacks and a hunt for other extremist cells that could be plotting follow-up strikes.
French officials call the climate conference “the biggest peace summit ever organized,” with 147 heads of state or government expected to attend. They will be guarded by 2,800 French police at the conference venue, with thousands more officers deployed throughout the city.
Attendees include Russian President Vladimir Putin, Chinese President Xi Jinping and President Barack Obama, who has emphasized that he sees attendance at the summit as even more important following the attacks.
“I think it’s absolutely vital for every country, every leader, to send a signal that the viciousness of a handful of killers does not stop the world from doing vital business,” Obama said this week.
But some elements of the conference won’t go ahead as planned. Demonstrations have been canceled, with police citing security risks.
Preparations for the summit came as Paris continued to mourn its dead. French President François Hollande fought back tears Friday morning as he led a somber remembrance of the attack victims at the gold-domed Hôtel des Invalides, a former military hospital.
With wounded attack victims in wheelchairs and relatives of the dead looking on from a cobblestoned courtyard, Hollande said France would “operate relentlessly to protect its children” from attack by “an army of fanatics.”
He also vowed that the country would respond with more music and sporting events following attacks on sites that included a concert hall and a stadium.
Security experts say that if the Islamic State or other militant groups decide to try to attack Paris during the climate summit, it is more likely they would once again try to hit lightly guarded targets, rather than try to penetrate multiple layers of security.
“This generation of terrorists knows that attacking leaders or protected sites is probably out of reach,” said Camille Grand, director of the Paris-based Foundation for Strategic Research. “That doesn’t mean they won’t try. But it’s extremely difficult.”
Grand said organizers are helped by the fact that the summit will be held just outside the city limits, at a conference center in Le Bourget, near Paris’s first airport. The world leaders will be staying on site, meaning that they will not be traveling through the heart of the city, where attackers on Nov. 13 turned a peaceful Friday night into a scene of multiple massacres.
Since then, France has declared a state of emergency, and security forces have conducted more than 1,000 raids and arrested more than 120 people on terrorism-related charges. Because of the heightened police activity, any would-be attackers “probably want to lay low and stay quiet” until the security crackdown eases, Grand said.
But organizers are still not taking any chances. Border controls have been tightened, and a section of the Périphérique, the major highway that rings Paris, will be shut down. Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo has urged city residents not to drive on Monday or Tuesday and to instead use public transit, which will be free.
Under regulations passed since the attacks, police have banned demonstrations, forcing nongovernmental organizations to create other options for protest.
Avaaz, a global campaign network whose name means “voice” in many languages, plans to cover the Place de la République with shoes symbolizing the footsteps of those who had planned to take part in the Global Climate March. The police have approved the installation of shoes, which the group has been collecting for the past week. The venue is the central Parisian square that is both the city’s unofficial place of mourning and the traditional site for expressions of political discontent.
Other groups are planning to create a human chain between the Place de la République and another of the city’s squares, two miles away, or to join a “great clamor for climate” by playing music and shouting from their windows for 15 minutes at 8 p.m. every night.
Several groups including the World Wildlife Fund, Greenpeace and France Nature Environment say they have developed an online tool to allow people to march in the Americas, Africa, Asia or elsewhere in Europe wearing the names and pictures of the people who had planned to demonstrate in Paris.
And some say they will simply disobey the police crackdown.
“We need to fight the state of emergency,” said Benjamin Ball, a member of a group called Les Désobéissants (The Disobediant). “Otherwise (the authorities) will extend it indefinitely.”
At the Place de la République on Friday, mourning citizens continued to pay tribute to the victims of terrorism, but they also looked ahead to a summit that many hope will help the world take a stand against an even greater long-term threat.
“We are all submerged in grief,” said Hélène Gauterie, wiping tears from her eyes as she stood before mountains of fading flowers and candles extinguished by days of rain. “It’s hard to imagine thinking of anything else.”
But Julie and Marc Motreux, visiting from the southern French city of Nîmes, said the threat of climate change was ultimately “more important for the world.”
Thomas Garreau, 22, and Justine Baudier, 28, both students from Versailles west of Paris, came to the square to mourn Quentin Mourier, a history of architecture professor who died at the Bataclan theater, the scene of the deadliest attacks.
“The terrorism happened and could happen again,” said Garreau, who belongs to an organization affiliated with climate politics. The climate conference, he said, could provide “constructive change.”
“Something positive must come of it,” Baudier said.
