May 25 (AFP) - A rightwing opposition bid to censure the government Tuesday over an embarrassing Corsica scandal appeared likely to fall flat after the arrest of a separatist hit-squad for the 1998 killing of France's top official on the troubled Mediterranean island. In the worst scandal faced in two years in office, the Socialist-led government this month sacked and placed behind bars its prefect on the island, Bernard Bonnet, amid reports he ordered police to set fire to a beachside restaurant. With Socialist Prime Minister Lionel Jospin commanding a healthy majority in the National Assembly, or lower house, the censure motion was doomed to fail. The opposition nonetheless had hoped to seize on the arson attack to criticise government policy in Corsica and undermine Socialist popularity ahead of the European elections next month. But on the eve of the censure vote, police after a 15-month inquiry suddenly squeezed confessions from hardline Corsican separatists who admitted to forming a six-man hit-squad to murder Corsica prefect Claude Erignac last year. Alain Madelin, head of the rightwing Liberal Democracy party, said he was "somewhat irritated to see the police success" in the murder investigation turned "into a sort of smokescreen covering up the state's responsibility" in the arson attack. Interior Minister Jean-Pierre Chevenement "must resign when a prefect is embroiled in an affair as ridiculous, as grotesque, and as dangerous for the authority of the state", Madelin added. He said the arrest of Erignac's murderers should in no way affect the government's accountability in Bonnet's alleged misdemeanours. "You don't tolerate drugs in cycling just because you won the World Cup," he said on French radio. Ironically, Bonnet, who is in jail facing complicity for arson, was dispatched to Corsica after his predecessor's February 6 murder to restore the rule of law on the crime- and corruption-wracked island. The sacked official is reported to have grown increasingly frustrated with local resistance to his clean-up drive. The restaurant set ablaze was illegally built and operating without a permit. With Corsica almost a byword in France for financial and political fraud, there has been little grassroots backing for opposition demands that ministerial heads roll on the grounds that cabinet members were involved in the arson or should accept responsibility for the prefect's alleged illicit action. Jospin's popularity has remained untouched by the scandal, soaring at a level of around 60 percent. Bonnet has claimed he acted alone and has cleared the government of all knowledge of his scheme to burn down restaurants that were built without permits. Police meanwhile issued an all-points alert for a shepherd suspected of firing the bullets in the 1998 hit-squad killing, distributing a photo of Yvan Colonna, son of a former Socialist parliamentarian, to police stations nationwide along with a warrant for his arrest. Colonna is believed to have fired the three bullets to the back of the head that killed Erignac, sending shockwaves across France. Corsica has been the scene of dozens of killings and some 10,000 terrorist attacks in a quarter-century of separatist violence, but Erignac was the seniormost official in memory to be gunned down. Five other radical Corsican nationalists were being questioned by police, four of whom are said to have confessed Monday to being part of the squad who killed Erignac in a bid to inflame tension and win supporters to their separatist cause. Police traced Erignac's alleged killers after a minute inquiry into calls made by mobile telephones in the heart of downtown Ajaccio, the island's capital, during the 80 minutes before and after his 9:00 p.m. murder there. --=-=-- 