Word: tunisia
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Tunisia's President Habib Bourguiba, the intransigent stand of the French can spell political extinction. At the funeral of Tunisians killed in the fighting, he solemnly pledged, over the very bodies of the dead, that he would get the French out of Bizerte. In two hour-long talks with Hammarskjold, Bourguiba explained that he had to make good his promise or go under...
...momentarily shocked into silence. Then he rallied, charged that the French refusal to hand over Bizerte was "dictated by a persistence of colonial mentality and by De Gaulle's own obsession with grandeur." He ordered the French oil pipeline terminus at La Skhira seized, and announced that Tunisia would fight on, "even if the whole world turns against us." Volunteers from "friendly countries" were welcome, said Bourguiba, including those offered by Egypt's Nasser, his old archenemy. His deputy, Bahi Ladgham, grimly summoned U.S. Ambassador Walter Walmsley and declared: "Now is your chance to prove how anticolonialist...
...friend Bourguiba (U.S. aid comprises 60% of the Tunisian government's budget), was as divided as its arms-which both sides are using against each other. Disregarding U.S. pleas that the dispute should be settled between themselves, Bourguiba demanded an emergency session of the U.N. Security Council, where Tunisia accused France of "premeditated aggression." France's U.N. Ambassador Armand Bérard retorted that the Tunisian events were "tragic and regrettable," but that "a minor pretext was used by the government of Tunisia-some minor work, involving two or three meters of terrain to facilitate the landing...
...week's end the Security Council debated the relative merits of a U.S.-British resolution urging both sides to negotiate and a U.A.R.-Liberian resolution additionally urging the speedy withdrawal of all French troops from Tunisia, finally settled on an interim resolution calling for a ceasefire. Both French and Tunisians quickly ordered their forces to comply. The battle had cost the French 13 dead, 35 wounded. The Tunisians lost more than 300, with at least 500 wounded...
...which last week resumed talks with the French at the Chateau de Lugrin, near Evian. In the five weeks since France broke off the talks, the F.L.N. has increased its prestige enormously and won new popularity among Algerian Moslems. Bourguiba, ambitious to lead a united Mahgreb of Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco, presumably felt the need to demonstrate to the F.L.N. and to the Arab world generally that he is no "imperialist lackey," but can be as anticolonialist and as pan-Arab as anyone. Furthermore, Bourguiba's earnest and devoted friendship seemed to have gotten him nowhere with France, while...