Word: tunisians
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Patrolling the Algerian side of the Tunisian border early one morning, Captain Rene Allard and 43 men of France's 23rd Infantry Regiment came under heavy mortar fire. Before long, 15 Frenchmen lay dead. The rebels, Allard later reported, had launched their attack from nearby Tunisia, were accompanied by vehicles of theTunisian National Guard. When French reinforcements arrived, the Algerians fled back into Tunisia, carrying with them four French prisoners...
...Gaillard an excellent opportunity to play upon France's touchy national pride -the kind of opportunity he invariably seizes when he finds himself in domestic political difficulties. Last week, little more than 24 hours after the attack, French Ambassador to Tunisia Georges Gorse appeared at the Tunisian Foreign Ministry with a stiff note of protest demanding the return of the four captured Frenchmen...
...Tunisians, offended by the "bellicose tone" of the note, refused to accept it. Next day the Tunisian government declared: "It is inexact that the Algerian elements withdrew into Tunisia with French prisoners." (Best guess as to the truth: the four Frenchmen were whisked into Tunisia for a day or so, then shipped back to a rebel base in Algeria...
...driving little Habib Bourguiba has done his best to keep Tunisia on good terms with France, a month ago even suggested a formal alliance between the two countries. His tiny army is no match for the hard-bitten Algerian forces that have infiltrated Tunisia, and the sympathies of the Tunisian peoples are with the Algerian rebels. If Gaillard brought too much pressure to bear on Tunisia, there was a real danger that Bourguiba might be replaced by someone fanatically hostile not only to France but to the entire West...
Biggest storm blew up not over the loi-cadre itself but over Pierre Mendès-France's plea that France could not afford to wave off Tunisian-Moroccan offers to mediate a settlement with the Algerian National Liberation Front (FLN). Mendès was howled down. He managed to finish only after his bitter political enemy Georges Bidault shouted: "If Mendès-France has not the right to speak here, then no one has the right to reply...