Word: mitterrand
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...women. She also scored unexpected triumphs with her pen, publishing three best-selling books since 1976. When she died last week at 64, of cancer, in the Normandy village of Autheuil-Authouillet, Simone Signoret had attained far more than movie stardom. "For more than 40 years," declared President Francois Mitterrand, "she spoke to the hearts of the French people...
...French daily Le Monde called it Operation Seduction. Officials in the government of French President Francois Mitterrand referred to it as a "charm offensive." In Washington, a Reagan Administration official huffily described the four-day visit to France last week as "more Gucci diplomacy...
Gorbachev's choice of France for his first official trip to the West was shrewd. Under Mitterrand, the country has continued to demonstrate its long- standing status as the most independent-minded of the Western allies. The Socialist President has publicly taken issue with Ronald Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), better known as Star Wars. There is also a historic precedent for special ties between Paris and Moscow, nurtured by the late Charles de Gaulle and continued by his successors as a means of enhancing France's role in world affairs...
...other hand, Mitterrand could hardly be described as a pushover for Soviet blandishments. After taking office in 1981, he suspended the frequent Franco-Soviet summit meetings that had been, as a Mitterrand adviser put it, a "liturgical institution" of detente. On a visit to Moscow last year, Mitterrand took the ailing Kremlin leadership of the day to task for its treatment of Nobel Laureate Andrei Sakharov. Moreover, the public mood in France these days is viscerally anti-Soviet. Said a French official: "Nowadays, everybody is repelled by the Soviets, who have discredited themselves in so many ways...
There is 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...