Toward an Agreement

"It is laborious, but we advance," was the word sent to Charles de Gaulle last week by his top negotiator, Louis Joxe, Minister for Algerian Affairs. In a secret meeting place near the Swiss border, Joxe's French delegation and that of the Moslem F.L.N., headed by Foreign Minister Belkacem Krim, were in the "final stage" of drawing up the cease-fire agreement that will end the seven-year Algerian war. There have been reports of an impending truce for months, but this time it seemed so close that one of the few remaining points at issue reportedly was De Gaulle's insistence that he himself be allowed to announce the accord.

Agreement has been hammered out on a dozen points, among them:

> Both sides agree to a referendum to take place in Algeria, with a yes or no vote on the question, "Do you approve of Algerian independence and cooperation with France?"

> France gives up its claim to the Algerian naval base of Mers-el-Kebir as a kind of French Gibraltar, instead settles for a 30-to 40-year lease.

> All Europeans in Algeria automatically become citizens for the first five years of independence, but may then opt for French citizenship. Those Europeans who wish to retain French citizenship from the start will be treated as "privileged" foreigners, with property guarantees and their own schools, but they must remain politically inactive.

> F.L.N. promises wide amnesty to all Moslems who served in the French administration or armed forces.

> F.L.N. agrees not to publish a white paper on French atrocities or to stage any "Nurnberg Trial" of Frenchmen, either in person or in absentia.

> France agrees to Algerian sovereignty over the Sahara, provided that French oil interests are respected.

> The cease-fire will be immediately followed by the setting up of a "Provisional Executive" with the specific job of handing over the government to the F.L.N. as soon as possible.

> The task of policing the cease-fire will gradually be turned over by the French-army in Algeria to a new Force Locale, made up of 80% Moslem, 20% French troops.

Slow Death. As peace appeared ever closer, the S.A.O. seemed ever more desperately determined to prevent it. During a single morning last week, 54 S.A.O. plastic bombs exploded in the Moslem quarter of Oran, burying families in the debris of tumbled tenements. The French army, torn between loyalty to De Gaulle and reluctance to give up Algeria, continued to show convenient blindness toward S.A.O. activities: Jeeploads of terrorists openly wore army-type uniforms and S.A.O. armbands. But there were signs, too, that the army was becoming increasingly disgusted with the S.A.O.

From time to time, army patrols cordoned off entire blocks in Oran and Algiers and seized quantities of S.A.O. guns and grenades in house-to-house searches.

The S.A.O. promptly made good its losses: a group of Europeans raided an Oran warehouse and made off with 205 pistols, rifles and submachine guns. S.A.O.

finances were replenished by a series of holdups that netted $70,000. As cities, Oran and Algiers were slowly dying. Garbage lay uncollected in the streets, and even unbombed buildings seemed to be crumbling into ruin. Gas and electricity were uncertain, and food was running short. The death toll for February rose toward 300, and it became increasingly difficult to tell who was killing whom, and why.

Panicky Stampede. In France itself, the S.A.O. and its enemies continued their own war of nerves. A leftist demonstration to protest the S.A.O. bombings in the capital was only able to mass 10,000 militants in the Place de la Bastille. To most observers, it was additional proof that the extreme left--like the extreme right--1acked mass support in France, and that the great body of the middle was either apathetic or strongly pro-De Gaulle. But the Paris police, swinging clubs and rifle butts, charged into the Bastille demonstrators, drove hundreds of them in a panicky stampede down a subway entrance. Eight died--three trampled to death, five brained by police clubs. Among the slain: three young women and a 16-year-old office boy of the Communist newspaper L'Humanite.

Last week, as four of the victims were buried in Pere-Lachaise cemetery, the funeral procession provoked the greatest public demonstration since the liberation of Paris. Called out by French labor unions and left-wing parties, more than 400,000 people either lined the streets in solemn observance or filled the boulevard in a marching column of 30 to 40 abreast.

All the old opposition war horses were there, from decrepit Communist Boss Maurice Thorez to ex-Premier Pierre Mendes-France to Authors Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir, marching arm in arm. Behind them, in massed ranks, came scientists and Sorbonne professors, truck drivers and postmen, young army conscripts, and students.

For four hours that morning, Paris resembled Algiers. Because of a series of sympathy strikes, there were no newspapers, no gas or electricity, no water.

Trains and buses stopped running. Cafes and shops closed down, the national radio supplied nothing but music--all the announcers had joined the strike. On the whole, the demonstration was impressive for its calm, sober mood, its disciplined, ominous silence. "One could not help being moved," observed liberal Le Monde.

Conservative Le Figaro thought the funeral "achieved a popular dignity of which the past furnishes but few examples." Belated Steal. De Gaulle's Interior Minister Roger Frey had charged that the violence in the Place de la Bastille was "manipulated and directed by the Communist Party and its henchmen," and he accused both left and right with "collusion against the Republic." Frey's diagnosis was shared by spokesmen of the Moslem F.L.N., who bitterly contend that the French Communist Party, through its belated demonstrations, is trying to steal credit for fighting the S.A.O. and winning freedom for Algeria. Butnon-Communist leftists protested that Frey's hard crack down actually played into Communist hands by giving them an issue of police brutality and martyrdom to exploit.

The government has good reason for being as tough on the left as it is on the S.A.O.: De Gaulle is sure that he can keep his uncertain control of the French army only by convincing the officer corps that he has no sympathy for the left. With Olympian imperturbability De Gaulle continued on his precarious way, balancing the now pacified F.L.N. against the left-wing revival, teetering from the brink of S.A.O. anarchy to the edge of a threatened army putsch. Hopeful but hard-headed observers still predict that 1) in France, the S.A.O. can make trouble, but has no chance of seizing power; and 2) in Algeria, it will cause tragic bloodshed after the agreement is announced, but in the end will be crushed.

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