Association or Else

The pink curtains of the Elysee Palace's Salle des Fetes parted, and a veteran performer stepped out to play a familiar, lordly role. Jauntily, Charles de Gaulle waved his arm at the 800 newsmen, adjusted his glasses and looked nearsightedly around for the first question. When it proved to be about Algeria, he quipped: "Now there's a question one might call pertinent." He beckoned a few more questions in, snapped "That's enough," and launched into a statement on Algeria. "The whole world is waiting," he said.

The Choice. De Gaulle offered the F.L.N. a blunt alternative: freedom in association with France, or a partitioned Algeria. In the event that Algeria chose to sever all ties, he warned, the Europeans, who "too have the right of self-determination," would "have to be relocated by us and their protection assured." And he vowed to deport the 400,000 Algerian Moslems who dig the ditches and clear the streets of Metropolitan France-- and whose remittances keep some 2,000,000 of their relatives back home alive. "Naturally, we should cease immediately to sink in a henceforth hopeless enterprise our resources, our men and our money. The fact is that, to say the least, Algeria costs us much more than she is worth to us."

Toward the rebels, De Gaulle took a kindly if condescending tone. While "one can be astonished" that the F.L.N. leaders have not accepted the proffered hand of peace, "I admit that it is difficult for an essentially insurrectional organism to tackle questions such as those of peace, of the organization of a state and of the economic development of a country." But he acknowledged that the rebels "have great responsibilities because of the influence they exercise and the audience they find among a large number of Moslems ... A number of them seem called upon to play an outstanding role in the first stages of the new Algeria." As for a free, united Algeria: "For my part, I am convinced that it will be sovereign, within and without."

Have Fun. If France pulled out of Algeria entirely, the Algerians would "straightaway" fall into "misery, chaos and Communism," but then "we would no longer have any duty toward them but to pity them." And if "the Soviet Union, or the United States, or both of them at once, should try to get a toehold, I say that I hope, in advance, that both of them enjoy themselves."

De Gaulle saved until the last his only real bit of bait for the rebels. "Someone asked me a question about Ben Bella?" he inquired, his long nose sweeping the room. No one had, but De Gaulle went on to promise that the F.L.N. leader, kidnaped off a plane out of Rabat back in 1956 and now jailed in France, would get "considerably more liberal treatment" (presumably removal from a cell to comfortable house arrest) once the Lake Geneva talks opened, and his freedom, once a cease-fire is signed. Thereupon, De Gaulle took off on a tour of Southwest France to repeat the same themes to the cheering crowds that lined his route.

The F.L.N. had hoped for considerably more, in particular a pledge that the French would negotiate only with the F.L.N., ignoring other Moslem factions. The rebels dismissed the partition threat as a bluff, arguing that such centers of French population as Algiers and Oran are not economically viable in isolation from the countryside, and in fact are the very areas where rebel sentiment is strongest. But there was a note of finality, as well as candor, about De Gaulle's position, and hopes were high that the battle of prides could now end and the negotiations get under way.

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