Word: messmer
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...Nuclear Issue. In Paris last week, French Defense Minister Pierre Messmer was coolly correct about Operation Big Lift. "Tres interessant," he sniffed, courteously refraining from saying I-told-you-so about the widely whispered suggestion that this meant, as Charles de Gaulle had often predicted, the U.S. would retreat from Europe and leave the Continental powers to their own devices. But the Gaullist paper La Nation spelled out a reasonable
...accomplished. Peace talks with the Algerian F.L.N. rebel delegation had collapsed. De Gaulle was faced with trying to keep a restless army and populace in check while the next move in Algeria was worked out. He sent Algerian Affairs Minister Louis Joxe, along with Defense Minister Pierre Messmer, to Algiers to check on the loyalty of the army and government officials and to probe the possibility of setting up some form of "provisional executive" in Algeria-a halfway house on the troubled road from French rule to Algerian independence. The travelers returned to Paris with gloomy reports. There seems little...
Biggest unknown quantity was the army-which has spent an estimated 16,-ooo lives trying to stamp out the F.L.N. guerrillas. Defense Minister Pierre Messmer and General Paul Ely, in Algiers on a "fact-finding" mission, discovered one self-evident fact: the Army's "consternation" at the possibility of an Algerian republic or a unilateral cease-fire by France. At the burial ceremony last week of ten Foreign Legion paratroopers killed in battle with the F.L.N., tough Colonel Jean Dufour, with tears in his eyes, said: "It is not possible their sacrifice has been in vain...
...Surveyors. As the weather thickened, De Gaulle was reported ready to put the question of Algerian peace to a referendum in France. At week's end he sent Defense Minister Pierre Messmer and Armed Forces Chief General Paul Ely to Algeria to survey prospects for a unilateral cease-fire and to inform the army that the destination is ultimately an independent republic...
Last week Salan was peremptorily summoned to Paris. ''I shall return," proclaimed Salan as he took ship for France. "If our goal is not to keep Algeria French, our struggle has no meaning." But in Paris, Defense Minister Pierre Messmer brusquely forbade the general to go back to Algiers. The order, he explained, was a decision of the "entire government." i.e., presumably De Gaulle himself...