Word: mitterrand
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...want to consider clearing his jokes with other targets of his humor, especially if one of them is the President of France. As the Soviet leader left a session of the Russian parliament last week, he stopped to tell reporters a self-deprecating joke that also featured Francois Mitterrand and George Bush. "They say that Mitterrand has 100 lovers. One has AIDS, but he doesn't know which one," Gorbachev said. "Bush has 100 bodyguards. One is a terrorist, but he doesn't know which one. Gorbachev has 100 economic advisers. One is smart, but he doesn't know which...
...joke appeared in newspapers around the world. In France, however, where Mitterrand's private life is the stuff of gossip but is rarely discussed in print, discretion prevailed. Agence France-Presse, which is subsidized by the government, carried the joke on its wires but in a bowdlerized version picked up from the Soviet media. No mention was made of Bush or Mitterrand, whose names were substituted by "a President...
Officially, France remains on the anti-Saddam bandwagon. During the CSCE summit in Paris two weeks ago, President Francois Mitterrand repeatedly told Bush that "we're not going to leave you alone in the desert." The public is more diffident: in a poll published by Le Figaro last week, only 36% said they would favor French involvement in a gulf war, down from 46% in September. An earlier survey had shown that 53% wanted France to stand by the U.S.; that figure has fallen...
...deadline for Iraq to comply with previous U.N. demands that it get out of Kuwait; the second would authorize member nations to use "any means necessary" to compel compliance if the deadline is not met. When Bush broached the idea of such a resolution to him, French President Mitterrand declared, "I said yes." But Mitterrand added that there would and should be no "automatisme" about the resolution. The apparent meaning: rather than starting to bomb without further ado once the deadline passed, the U.S. would be obliged to consult, presumably with the U.N.'s military staff committee, about what kind...
Since Francois Mitterrand became President in 1981, his fragile alliance of socialists and communists seemed destined to rupture. The dispute ostensibly centered on a new social security tax, but the motives of the communists go deeper. During the past nine years, the communists have watched their electorate dwindle. By breaking with the socialists, the communists hope to revive their party's identity as the true champion of socialism...