Word: fabius
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...television interview last week, a besieged Premier Laurent Fabius credited reporters with helping clear up "this unfortunate affair," noting that "it is they who have opened the floodgates to a vein of lies that existed...
...investigation in New Zealand and a stream of press revelations in France steadily increased suspicions that Mitterrand and his advisers had indeed played a role in the affair. Early last week, after forcing the resignations of France's Defense Minister and its head of foreign intelligence operations, Premier Laurent Fabius went on national television and admitted that the Rainbow Warrior had been blown up by French agents on the orders of unnamed government officials...
Instead of putting the matter to rest, the Premier's admission further aroused public indignation. Three days later, Fabius again went before TV cameras to answer the explosive question: Who had actually ordered the attack that caused the death of a Greenpeace photographer, provoked a diplomatic crisis with New Zealand and tarnished the moral authority of the Socialist government? The answer, according to Fabius, was former Defense Minister Charles Hernu, who had resigned five days before, and Vice Admiral Pierre Lacoste, the cashiered intelligence chief. "It is at their level that I place the responsibility," Fabius declared...
...blaming Hernu, a close friend and associate of Mitterrand's, Fabius was attempting to distance both himself and the President from what French newspapers were calling the "Underwatergate affair." But after repeated denials of official involvement, Fabius' reversal provoked widespread skepticism. A Sofres-Le Figaro poll taken just before the Premier's midweek TV appearance indicated 52% of the French people believe that Mitterrand and Fabius knew beforehand about the plan to blow up the Rainbow Warrior. Fully 78% condemned the decision to sabotage the ship...
...controversy centered on the Defense Ministry, Fabius was aware of the need to reassure the armed forces. In his midweek TV appearance, he stressed that the army "is absolutely not to blame in all this." He chose a respected military man, Army Chief of Staff General Rene Imbot, 60, to replace Lacoste at the head of the Direction Generale de la Securite Exterieure, France's overseas espionage agency. Imbot's first assignment was to reorganize the DGSE. The housecleaning had begun with the arrest of four agents suspected of leaking information on the Greenpeace case to the press. They were...