Word: arafa
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...much of last week, France's reputation abroad and the fate of its government at home rested in the shaky hands of a hesitant old man-Morocco's Sultan Sidi Mohammed ben Moulay Arafa. All week long, Foreign Minister Antoine Pinay telephoned anxiously from Manhattan, in hopes of favorable news to influence the U.N. Assembly vote on the Algerian situation. From Paris, Premier Edgar Faure telephoned urgently to Morocco's Resident General Boyer de Latour; unless Ben Moulay Arafa had "voluntarily" departed before the National Assembly met this week, the Faure government was doomed...
...midweek, De Latour had worked out a compromise with the leaders of the Présence Française: Ben Moulay Arafa would leave, but turn over the royal seal, symbol of the Sultan's authority, not to the Regency Council but to a member of his own family. The old Sultan seemed ready to agree, but then balked. His chief adviser, Vizier Si Hadj Abder Raman el Hajou, had talked him into refusing any compromise at all. De Latour acted. At 4 one morning, police arrived at El Hajou's apartment in downtown...
...issue was Premier Edgar Faure's desperate attempt to provide a policy for rebellious Morocco. Two weeks ago, his Cabinet had announced agreement on a program of which the chief features were removal of Sultan Sidi Mohammed ben Moulay Arafa and his replacement by a three-man regency council. President Coty himself sent a letter to the Resident General, Lieut. General Pierre Boyer de Latour, for delivery to Arafa; a French destroyer stood by to carry the aged Sultan to sanctuary in Tangier...
...consulted on the wording, and President Coty's letter was withdrawn. The Defense Minister, retired Gaullist General Pierre Koenig, declared his opposition to the whole plan. Deputies demonstrated in the Assembly, and Pierre Montel, chairman of the Assembly's Defense Committee, flew to Morocco to urge Sultan Arafa to refuse to leave the throne. Marshal Alphonse Juin, NATO's Central European commander and France's top military man, publicly denounced Faure's plan as "appeasement" and rallied other old North African veterans to his cause. Summoned to a Cabinet meeting, De Latour angrily stomped...
From the French colons and their ally in intransigeance, aged El Glaoui, the Pasha of Marrakech, came exactly the opposite advice: Stay where you are. Moulay Arafa uncomfortably announced that only Allah could recall him, but at the same time looked longingly at the sumptuous palace waiting for him across the border in Tangier...