Word: tunisian
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...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." and that, in.any case, responsibility for the attack must...
...politician with a barometric response to popular mood, shrewd Habib Bourguiba recognized that his only hope of heading off a national swing to neutralism lay in putting 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...
Moving enthusiastically to enforce Bourguiba's order confining all French soldiers to barracks, Tunisian National Guardsmen threw up roadblocks, and armed civilians dug slit trenches around France's ten Tunisian bases. Three men set up a machine gun at the canal at the entrance to the great naval base of Bizerte to bar the entrance of further French vessels. At other bases, food supplies were shut off. When a French diplomat formally requested permission to revictual the garrison, Vice Premier Bahi Ladgham told him coldly: "Leave Tunisia and you can find all the food you need." Should...
...Sacred Interests. Bourguiba, whose ill-equipped army of 6,200 men could not conceivably stand up to a serious French attack, was taking a major gamble. "I have promised the Tunisian people that the French army will go," said he. "If I fail, I will be swept away." Clearly, any successor in such circumstances would be far more hostile to France and the West...
...pledged himself and his new country to maintain "special links" with France, still looks to it for economic help. He has curbed the power of his anti-French Interior Minister, Taieb Mehri, and fired his Minister of Youth and Sports, Azouz Rebai, for using his position to inflame Tunisian youth. He has repeatedly ignored Communist overtures, and only accepted a $250,000 Soviet shipment of medical supplies, food and clothing for Algerian refugees in Tunisia (estimated at from 20,000 to 40,000) on the condition that no Russian be allowed a hand in their distribution...