Word: sidi
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Composed and carefully groomed, Premier Félix Gaillard rose from his front-row chair in France's National Assembly last week and assured his countrymen that the bombing of Sakiet-Sidi-Youssef constituted a display of "exemplary patience." By the time Gaillard spoke, dozens of foreign diplomats and journalists had visited Sakiet-Sidi-Youssef and confirmed Tunisian reports that a high percentage of the 209 casualties (79 dead, 130 wounded) inflicted by the French air force were women and children. Blandly ignoring these facts, Gaillard insisted that "the majority of the victims were soldiers of the Algerian F.L.N...
...this hard to swallow. But when the most notable of the dissenters, ex-Premier Pierre Mendés-France, rose to speak, he was showered with right-wing catcalls of "Jew" and "traitor." In the end the duly elected representatives of the French people approved the bombing of Sakiet-Sidi-Youssef by a vote of 339 to 179. Of the 179 nays, all but 31 came from Communists or fellow travelers...
...himself at the head of the anti-French parade. Bourguiba ordered 400 French civilians out of the Tunisian-Algerian border area "for security reasons," demanded that France close five of her ten consulates in Tunisia, directed his U.N. delegation to request an immediate Security Council debate on the Sakiet-Sidi-Youssef bombing. In his most drastic move he also demanded immediate withdrawal of the 22,000 troops that France has been permitted to leave in Tunisia even after the establishment of full Tunisian independence...
Under sharp questioning from the National Assembly's Foreign Affairs Committee, Pineau finally admitted that neither the Cabinet nor Robert Lacoste, France's Minister Resident in Algeria, had known in advance of the decision to attack Sakiet-Sidi-Youssef. Neither, apparently, had General Raoul Salan, the luckless Indo-China veteran who commands French forces in Algeria. The murderous blow that earned France worldwide obloquy had been ordered by a local air force officer, reportedly a colonel, on the strength of an imprecise government directive authorizing retaliatory attack on Algerian rebel concentrations in the immediate frontier areas bordering...
...fear, would open the way to international "interference" in the Algerian rebellion-the Gaillard government announced that it was now willing to accept "the good offices" of the U.S. in settling the dispute. Even more important psychologically, Gaillard and his Cabinet tacitly admitted France's guilt at Sakiet-Sidi-Youssef by offering to pay damages to civilian victims of the bombing...