Word: tunisian
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...Tunisia itself neither disputant seemed so reasonable. When France defied Bourguiba's demand for the closing of five French consulates, Tunisian police forcibly shut them down and evicted their staffs. Bourguiba appeared to be adamant in his insistence that France must evacuate not only the dozen or so minor French garrisons scattered throughout Tunisia but also four airstrips and the vast naval complex of Bizerte, which is the French navy's most important Mediterranean base after Toulon...
...Remada in southern Tunisia the French army gave yet another demonstration of its irresponsibility. Angered at the destruction of a French jeep and the wounding of two Frenchmen by a land mine planted on Remada Airstrip, the local French commander promptly seized the senior Tunisian official in the area, held him incommunicado for twelve hours. This high-handed treatment of a government official in his own country provoked a new wave of Tunisian anger...
...forgot the bombing in their outrage at Bourguiba's move. Foreign Minister Christian Pineau announced that France had offered to negotiate withdrawal of her forces from Tunisia, but only if Bourguiba ceased his "pressure and provocation." Declared Pineau grandiloquently: "France intends to defend her interests, and the Tunisian government must understand their sacred character." To offset Bourguiba's U.N. appeal, Pineau lodged a countercomplaint with the Security Council, charging, accurately enough, that Tunisia had permitted Algerian rebels to operate from Tunisian soil. Said Pineau: "We are the accusers...
Second Thoughts. All week long France's allies worked feverishly to find a solution that would save face all around. In New York members of Britain's U.N. delegation scurried about trying to drum up support for a demilitarized Tunisian-Algerian border patrolled by a force similar to the UNEF in Gaza. One obvious objection to this scheme: it would severely handicap the Algerian rebels by depriving them of their privileged sanctuary and would thereby damage Bourguiba's prestige with his countrymen, the bulk of whom ardently support the rebel cause. In Paris U.S. Ambassador Amory Houghton...
...abolished polygamy, and pushed the secularization of the state, but he has not come effectively to grips with his little country's economic problems, which include 400,000 unemployed in a population of 3,800,000. His overriding concern is to get the Algerian problem settled while preserving Tunisian independence from France. "Basically and profoundly," he says, "we are with the West." He still hopes to see "our Algerian brothers" free and joined with Tunisia and Morocco in a North African federation backed by France...