Word: mitterrand
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...private session with journalists last week, French President Francois Mitterrand described it as "criminal and absurd . . . and stupid." Indeed, whoever blew up and sank the Rainbow Warrior, flagship of the Greenpeace environmental organization, in New Zealand's Auckland harbor last July did not do France or its President any favor. As the usually pro-Mitterrand Paris daily Le Monde and other papers zeroed in on the culpability of the government in the mysterious act of sabotage, the President could no longer remain aloof from what was rapidly becoming one of France's worst political crises in the four years since...
Members of an aroused conservative opposition quickly dubbed the affair "Underwatergate." They accused Mitterrand either of conducting a deceitful cover-up or of ignorance of his own government's secret-service operations. With crucial legislative elections only six months away, the President could not afford to see his moral authority jeopardized in the eyes of an electorate already largely disenchanted with Socialist leadership. As Mitterrand attempted to defuse the Greenpeace scandal, his Defense Minister, + Charles Hernu, resigned, a tacit admission of French wrongdoing in the affair. Paul Quiles, a Mitterrand loyalist who had been Minister of Town Planning, Housing...
...crisis was a bruising political setback for Mitterrand. And Hernu was a special loss. The 62-year-old former magistrate is a longtime confidant of the President's. Hernu almost single-handedly persuaded the Socialist Party in 1976 to support the French nuclear force de frappe, which it had officially opposed for six years. The Defense Minister personified the promilitary, antipacifist and Western-oriented thinking of the Mitterrand regime. He was also highly popular with France's armed forces. One opposition leader admitted that Hernu was "the only Socialist minister who should be kept in a new administration...
Warning signals of presidential wrath had been coming from the Elysee Palace for two days. At his weekly Cabinet meeting, Mitterrand asked questions about the Greenpeace affair and furiously turned to Hernu, whose responsibilities included overseeing the secret services. "I want to know," said Mitterrand. "I want to know." Next day the President sent a letter to Premier Laurent Fabius noting that French newspapers and magazines were uncovering "new elements that we cannot evaluate because of the absence of information from the appropriate services." It was a strange plea. Mitterrand was, in effect, asking his own government to supply information...
...Pacific. The new flagship, a converted oceangoing 900-ton tugboat that has been christened the Greenpeace, will rendezvous with other ships to protest French nuclear tests in the South Pacific expected to be held in October. In a sharply worded statement immediately following the ship's departure, Mitterrand vowed to continue testing in the area and to repel all protests "by force if necessary." Greenpeace officials have said that the group would abide by the twelve-mile barrier imposed by France, but New Zealand's Lange was dismayed by the warning. The threat, he said, "reflects the consistent ly insensitive...