Word: debre
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Intent on making lively the arrival of France's Premier Michel Debré in Algeria, six men sat around a table in an Algerian village tinkering with the timing device of a bomb. The bomb exploded and the six were blown to bits...
...situation in Algeria was not that explosive but nearly as uncertain. Debré came to sound out the political climate before next month's cantonal elections, in which De Gaulle hopes to see loyal Moslems elected who can discuss the promised "self-determination" referendum on Algeria's future. But before he returned to Paris, Debré took to the radio to make bluntly clear what has long been implied in De Gaulle's much-mooted plans for Algeria...
...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...
Even within the Gaullist U.N.R.-the political mainstay of Premier Michel Debré's Cabinet-there is dissension. Many U.N.R. wheelhorses openly sympathize with tough Jacques Soustelle-the man whom De Gaulle fired as Minister of the Sahara for showing undue sympathy toward the European insurgents of Algiers last January. Soustelle recently organized an "Information Center on the Problems of Algeria and the Sahara," makes no bones of his intention of offering "intellectual support" to Algeria's De Gaulle-hating settlers and their friends in the French army...