Word: fabius
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...turned from big-spending policies to belt-tightening austerity. Although it champions self-determination in Third World nations, the government has moved cautiously in meeting the demands of separatists in the French Pacific territory of New Caledonia. Last year Mitterrand replaced Premier Pierre Mauroy, a populist, with Laurent Fabius, a technocrat who avidly supports the President's pragmatic approach. That was too much for the Communists, and they pulled out of a long-standing alliance between the two parties. These policy switches disillusioned many committed Socialists but failed to win many conservative converts...
...member was killed. For weeks the government denied any involvement in the bombing of the ship, which had been docked in the harbor of Auckland, New Zealand, before it was to lead a protest against French nuclear testing on Mururoa Atoll. Under persistent pressure from the French press, Premier Fabius was eventually forced to admit that French intelligence agents had indeed been ordered to blow up the ship. The scandal tarred the government with suspicions of a cover-up and forced the resig- nation of Defense Minister Charles Hernu...
Then it was the turn of French Premier Laurent Fabius. After an hour-long chat with Gorbachev, Fabius recounted that he had handed the Soviet leader a list of ten pending human rights cases that are of special interest to the Mitterrand government. Said Fabius: "We had a very live conversation." Gorbachev's response came during the speech to the National Assembly in which he called for separate nuclear arms negotiations with Britain and France. "The Soviet Union attaches the most serious importance to ensuring human rights," he declared. But he added that "it is only necessary to free this...
After Premier Fabius bid the Soviet couple adieu that afternoon, a weary high French official delivered his assessment of Gorbachev's marathon effort. "I can tell you, he made good use of his public forum," the official said. "He knows what he wants. He is firm, but he is not without flexibility and subtlety." So far as his major objectives in Paris were concerned, however, the Soviet leader's charm and subtlety yielded little in the way of substantive results...
...little chance the agents who actually carried out the bombing of the Rainbow Warrior will ever face trial in New Zealand. French law forbids their extradition, and the Mitterrand government, so far at least, refuses to name them. But in the arena of French politics, the prosecution of Laurent Fabius and Francois Mitterrand may have just begun. At week's end DGSE Director Imbot issued an ominous warning: "There has been a plot to destabilize and destroy the intelligence services. I have now sealed off those services. From now on, anything you hear in the press does not come from...