FRANCE’S QUEST FOR PREMIER

Press, Volume LXXXIX, Issue 27072, 22 June 1953, Page 9

FRANCE’S QUEST FOR PREMIER

(Ree. 11 p.m.) PARIS, June 20. Twenty-one French political leaders met today in a unique attempt toj work out a programme and policy to I solve the. country’s nineteenth and longest post-war government crisis. The President (Mr Auriol) proposed the conference yesterday. He will nominate one of them as Premier-designate after they submit their programme, possibly tomorrow. By this means he hopes that France may have a Prime Minister by June 23

The veteran Moderate Conservative, Mr. Paul Reynaud, himself a former Prime Minister, presided at the meet-i mg today, which was attended by I other former Prime Ministers, Prime i Minister-designates, and leaders of all Parliamentary groups except the Communists.

CIVIL CLAIM BY EGYPT

British Destruction Of Village

(Rec. 8 p.m.) LONDON, June 20. Reuter’s correspondent at Fayid in the Suez Canal Zone says that Egypt today sued Mr Robert Hankey, the British Charge d’Affaires in Egypt, and General Sir Brian Robertson, Commander-in-Chief of the Middle East Land Forces for £37,925 for “the destruction of Salak Malak, an Egypt-1 lan village about 10 miles south of r? yid s?y<^£ itish troops and tanks on May 26, 1953.” The writ was issued upon the application of an anonymous Egyptian, i The plaintiff alleged that British troops drove out the inhabitants of the village before razing it to the ground, rendering hundreds homeless. The incident referred to iri the summons is the flattening out by British sappers of Salak Malak. a “ghost” village uninhabited since 1951. The British military authorities ordered the village destroyed because its Sosition threatened a British water Itration Plant nearby. The British authorities announced at the time that every empty and roofless mudbrick hovel was searched, and that the village was established to be uninhabited before the operation began. The case is expected to be heard in a Cairo teourt on July 23.