Word: tunisians
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Troubleshooter Robert Murphy and his fellow "good officer," Britain's Harold Beeley. Cause of their optimism: Tunisia's President Habib Bourguiba, in a sudden access of moderation, had agreed to let France keep control of the great Bizerte naval base, and to accept neutral surveillance of five Tunisian air bases that he wants France to evacuate...
...people to assume that all French forces would be out of Tunisia by March 20, Bourguiba now apparently felt obliged to make a dramatic gesture to direct popular attention from the fact that the French have not budged. But scarcely had he delivered his face-saving blast when Tunisian diplomats in Washington hustled around to the State Department to explain that his speech did not really mean what it seemed to mean...
Felix Gaillard. By week's end the two "good officers" had brought France and Tunisia closer to an agreement than at any time since the bombing of Sakiet. Despite his loud public defiance of Tunisian demands, Gaillard had agreed in private to withdraw all French forces in Tunisia to the naval base of Bizerte, even to discuss the future status of Bizerte itself. The chief remaining sticking point was Tunisian insistence that any settlement must be accompanied by a general discussion of the Algerian war. The French, still clinging to the notion that Algeria is a purely domestic problem...
...more French troops to join the 500,000 already fighting the Algerian rebels. While he politicked, Gaillard left U.S. Trouble-shooter Robert Murphy and Britain's Harold Beeley cooling their heels, thus deliberately stalling their "good offices" mission to settle the rankling dispute between France and Tunis. Tunisian tempers were not improved as the first of thousands of Algerians uprooted from France's new no man's land along the Algerian-Tunisian frontier streamed into Tunisia and huddled miserably in makeshift tents...
...week's end, with Bourguiba firing off denunciations of the French plan to displace 70,000 people to create an uninhabited "no man's land" along the Algerian-Tunisian frontier ("an insult to humanity"), the deadlock seemed publicly as total as ever. But from backstage came reports that Bourguiba showed some signs of willingness to meet the French part way, let them retain the all-important Bizerte base provided that they evacuated all their other Tunisian bases...