Word: debre
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Last week Premier Michel Debré rose in the French Assembly and proclaimed that the time had come to crack down on the home distillers. He had found it impossible to police more than 2,100,000 Frenchmen holding home-distilling permits; in some departments, there is a home still for every other adult male, with a gallon and a half of illegal booze produced for every gallon distilled under legal limitations. Furthermore, the ocean of homemade booze was killing too many Frenchmen, he argued. "In the past 14 years,'' said Debré, "total deaths from alcoholism have...
...Debré wanted broad powers to regulate, and gradually eliminate, the home distillers. The legislators balked at that. Finally and reluctantly, they passed his bill, but only after adding a proviso that no presently licensed home distiller-or his widow-should be deprived of his right to distill his own brandy. This meant that the government, by granting no new permits, could stamp out home distilling -in only 60 years...
...agree to a cease-fire unless De Gaulle makes good on his implicit promise to give the F.L.N. an opportunity to participate in the political referendum that will determine Algeria's future. But only hours after the rebels accepted De Gaulle's negotiation offer, Premier Michel Debré himself put out the word that French negotiators would refuse to talk politics until after the F.L.N. agreed to lay down arms. Other government officials repeatedly assured reporters that nothing would come of the talks...
...referendum will offer three alternatives: integration with France, autonomous association with France (which De Gaulle hopes for), or total independence. Asked Debré: "In the incredible, disastrous hypothesis that a majority in Algeria determines for secession, what happens?" He answered himself: "There is not and there will not be abandonment. One cannot remove, one does not remove from those Algerians who want to live freely as French . . . either the possibility of French life or the quality of being French citizens. The truth is, secession really means partition. The most sacred principles do not permit it to be otherwise...
...effect, Debré was attempting to assure Algeria's Europeans and the loyal Moslems who side with them that they would not be left at the mercy of the F.L.N. if they voted to remain with France and lost. To Moslems who might vote for outright independence, it was a warning that their victory would not give them the whole cake; the oil regions and rich farm areas would in all likelihood stay in French hands, leaving the apostles of independence only the Moslem-dominated areas, which are mostly desert, mountains, and arid land...