Word: bourguibaism
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Moving enthusiastically to enforce Bourguiba's order confining all French soldiers to barracks, Tunisian National Guardsmen threw up roadblocks, and armed civilians dug slit trenches around France's ten Tunisian bases. Three men set up a machine gun at the canal at the entrance to the great naval base of Bizerte to bar the entrance of further French vessels. At other bases, food supplies were shut off. When a French diplomat formally requested permission to revictual the garrison, Vice Premier Bahi Ladgham told him coldly: "Leave Tunisia and you can find all the food you need." Should...
...Sacred Interests. Bourguiba, whose ill-equipped army of 6,200 men could not conceivably stand up to a serious French attack, was taking a major gamble. "I have promised the Tunisian people that the French army will go," said he. "If I fail, I will be swept away." Clearly, any successor in such circumstances would be far more hostile to France and the West...
...French press all but forgot the bombing in their outrage at Bourguiba's move. Foreign Minister Christian Pineau announced that France had offered to negotiate withdrawal of her forces from Tunisia, but only if Bourguiba ceased his "pressure and provocation." Declared Pineau grandiloquently: "France intends to defend her interests, and the Tunisian government must understand their sacred character." To offset Bourguiba's U.N. appeal, Pineau lodged a countercomplaint with the Security Council, charging, accurately enough, that Tunisia had permitted Algerian rebels to operate from Tunisian soil. Said Pineau: "We are the accusers...
...delegation scurried about trying to drum up support for a demilitarized Tunisian-Algerian border patrolled by a force similar to the UNEF in Gaza. One obvious objection to this scheme: it would severely handicap the Algerian rebels by depriving them of their privileged sanctuary and would thereby damage Bourguiba's prestige with his countrymen, the bulk of whom ardently support the rebel cause. In Paris U.S. Ambassador Amory Houghton urged moderation on Felix Gaillard, and in Tunis Ambassador Lewis Jones did the same with Bourguiba. At week's end Secretary John Foster Dulles, who had summoned French Ambassador...
Slowly tempers cooled. In Tunisia, Habib Bourguiba relaxed his blockade of French bases enough to permit the entry of civilian trucks carrying food. In Paris, too, there were second thoughts. From the start Foreign Minister Pineau had been privately dismayed by the attack on Sakiet. (When U.S. Columnist Joseph Alsop quoted him as calling the bombing "a sad error," Pineau at first flatly denied the quote, then admitted, "I may have said a few imprudent words" which Alsop had "distorted...