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Balladur was livid at the news. He informed Algerian Prime Minister Mokdad Sifi that he held "Algerian authorities responsible for the security of the French nationals in the plane." According to several French publications, including the Nouvel Observateur, the Algerians attempted to make the departure of the plane contingent on a resumption of French arms shipments to Algeria. At the end of his patience, Balladur called President Lamine Zeroual just before midnight and told him that "France is ready to receive immediately the Air France plane with its passengers on French soil." Early Monday morning the Airbus took off and headed out over the Mediterranean.
At 3:33 a.m., it touched down at Marseilles, ostensibly for a refueling stop. Only minutes earlier, Major Favier and his G.I.G.N. troopers had arrived from Mallorca at an adjacent air base. They spent the morning hours practicing every detail of a rescue operation on their Airbus while Marseilles police chief Alain Gehin negotiated with the hijackers from the control tower.
Still using pilot Delhemme to speak for them, the hijackers broke radio silence at 6 a.m. to demand 27 tons of fuel and permission to fly to Paris. Since the trip normally requires only 10 tons, French officials feared the militants had other plans. One possibility was that they would head for a friendly Islamic country -- perhaps Iran, or Sudan, or Yemen; another that they were scheming to blow up the fuel-laden plane over the capital.
A few hours later, that hypothesis gained weight with word that an anonymous informant had warned the French consulate in Oran, Algeria, that the plane was "a flying bomb that will explode over Paris." From accounts of passengers released in Algiers, the French had already learned that there was dynamite on board; demolition experts would subsequently confirm that the explosives were placed in such a manner as to rip the plane apart if triggered.
Gehin played for time, trying to wear down the hijackers and win the release of more passengers while the G.I.G.N. prepared for its assault. "Listen," Yahia said at one point, "in my opinion, you want us to blow up everything right here! You have 1 1/2 hours to let us take off for Paris -- until 9:40." The negotiators succeeded in pushing back the ultimatum by agreeing to supply more food and water, empty the toilets and provide vacuum cleaners for the plane.
The servicing was done by G.I.G.N. men wearing -- in an ironic reversal of how the hijack had started in Algiers -- airport staff uniforms. The troopers were able to ascertain that the plane's doors were not blocked or booby- trapped. According to some accounts, the policemen also slipped tiny eavesdropping devices into the aircraft. Along with external surveillance devices -- infrared-vision equipment and "cannon" microphones trained on the windows and fuselage -- the bugs would have allowed the gendarmes to follow the hijackers' movements inside the aircraft.