Nights of Doubt

For the Moslems of Algeria, as for their brethren elsewhere in Islam, it was Leilat-echek, or the Night of Doubt, when the faithful traditionally scan the sky for the appearance of the moon that marks the beginning of the holy month, Ramadan. It was also the time Charles de Gaulle had chosen for his latest broadcast report on the Algerian situation, and he sounded as if, for him, the night held no doubts whatever: peace with the Moslems of Algeria would soon be concluded, he insisted, and the terrorist Secret Army Organization would be crushed.

Without once mentioning the S.A.O. by name, De Gaulle made a scathing attack upon it. He poured scorn on "unworthy Frenchmen launched into subversive and criminal activities" who were "exploiting and aggravating the anxiety of a segment of the population of European origin, the nostalgia of certain elements of the army, the rancor and the ambition of several military leaders or available politicians." They would fail, cried De Gaulle, because "the nation itself unanimously scorns and condemns these people, their conspiracies and their attacks."

Before and after De Gaulle's astringent, contemptuous speech, the killing went on.

Upside Down. In Algeria, an S.A.O. detachment took over the newspaper office of L'Echo d'Oran, put out 20,000 copies of an edition with a huge picture of the S.A.O. chief, ex-General Raoul Salan, and a fiery S.A.O. communique, which in their haste they printed upside down. S.A.O. gunmen murdered Commandant Andre Boulle, chief of gendarmerie at Sidi-bel-Abbas, just as he was about to take a plane to Paris to be commended for exceptional service. As the steamer Ville de Bordeaux was about to cast off from Bone harbor bound for France with a returning force of security police, a hidden bomb killed four, including the young son of a policeman.

In Paris the plastic bombs went off all week long. One exploded at the house of Culture Minister Andre Malraux, but the famed author of Man's Fate was not at home. The detonation drove 300 splinters of glass into the face and body of four-year-old Delphine Renard, whose engineer father occupied the ground floor. Doctors last week operated in the hope of saving her sight.

Because of the government's seeming failure to prevent the bombings or to bring the plastiqueurs to justice, Communist, Independent Socialist and Roman Catholic trade unions called for a mass demonstration at the Place de la Bastille. But demonstrations have been forbidden since last April's state of emergency was declared by De Gaulle, and police charged the 12,000 workers massing in a dozen back streets. Crying "S.A.O. Assassins!" the crowd fought back with bricks and paving stones, but hundreds went down beneath the rifle butts, lead-weighted capes and heavy riot clubs of the police. In less than an hour, eight demonstrators died, their skulls crushed by repeated blows. Among them: three young women and a 15-year-old boy.

Sheepish Surrender. Scarcely had the streets been cleared than ten new plastic bombs exploded in widely separated parts of Paris. One blew in the windows of the Soviet news agency, Tass. At week's end a one-hour workers' strike to protest the police methods used to break up the Bastille demonstration stalled Parisian industry and business. City and suburban buses halted, the Paris subway and commuter train service was affected. Actress Brigitte Bardot, who had won respect last November by publicly defying an S.A.O. blackmail attempt, walked off a movie set along with film technicians.

Despite De Gaulle's bold words, it was a bad week for the government. Yet there was one piece of good news from Algeria: a military patrol near Philippeville rounded up 40 uniformed men wearing S.A.O. armbands; they called themselves the "Bonaparte Commando." The entire group was captured without a shot being fired, and their sheepish surrender strengthened those Gaullists who have maintained that the S.A.O. detachments, though capable of bombings and isolated assassinations, have no stomach for a showdown fight.

At week's end, negotiators once again converged on the unknown meeting place for what probably was their last session. From Tunis, headquarters of the F.L.N. provisional government, came a top team headed by Deputy Premier Belkacem Krim and Foreign Minister Saad Dahlah. The French delegation was led by able Louis Joxe. Minister for Algerian Affairs in De Gaulle's Cabinet. For the first time,

Paris observers were setting the target date for a peace treaty between France and the F.L.N. in terms of days, instead of weeks or months. Reportedly, the French government was ready with stacks of freshly printed posters announcing the ceasefire. One poster showed a Moslem F.L.N. soldier and a French army conscript shaking hands under the legend: "Peace in Algeria."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.