French Premier-Designate Prepares Policy

Press, Volume XC, Issue 27377, 16 June 1954, Page 11

French Premier-Designate Prepares Policy

(N.Z. Press Association—Copyright) (Rec. 11 p.m.) PARIS, June 15. Mr Pierre Mendes-France hopes to announce today when he will ask the National Assembly for a vote of confidence as France’s next Prime Minister.

It is believed that he may go before the Assembly on Thursday. His chances depend on whether the Socialists vote for him. If they do, he has a chance of becoming France’s twentieth Prime Minister since the war.

After talks yesterday on the formation of a new Cabinet, Mr Mendes-France described his Indo-China policy as “the exact opposite of capitulation.”

He added: “Parliament must be given a coricrete programme for putting an end to the Indo-China problem. I will submit a programme aimed at continuing the negotiations at Geneva, together with the Associated States of Indo-China. “The solution I have always recommended is more than ever needed today. It is a reasonable, well-balanced solution, taking into account tfare realities of the situation, conforming to the interests of France and maintaining her presence in Indo-China and her fidelity to her obligations.’’ He said his policy was the exact opposite of capitulation. “We might ho doubt have got better terms at some earlier., stage, but at present everybody is aware of the real situation. It seems to me after long military consultations that we can obtain a solution at Geneva which has some relation to what the French people want ’’

Mr Mendes-France, who has been asked to form a government to succeed Mr Joseph Lahiel, said he would consult Foreign Office officials todav and also meet members of his own Radical Party.

•The talks which President Rene Coty had on Saturday and Sunday with the leaders of the Gaullist, Radical, Independent, Popular Republican and Socialist groups in Parliament are reported to have shown that none of these groups wanted any departure from the Atlantic Pact. If Mr MendesFrance is elected Prime Minister, it will not be any indication, as has already been alleged, that France wants to prepare the way to join the Soviet camp.

Observers say it will merely mean that a majority of French Parliamentarians think that an extension of hostilities in Indo-China with Ajnerican participation would increase the danger of a thir*d world war.

Parliamentary opinion in Paris has been impressed by the growing American reluctance to do anything concrete about taking part in the Indo-China fighting. An opinion poll showing that 72 per cent, of Americans are opposed to sending United States soldiers to fight in Indo-China was widely publicised in the French press under such headlines as “the great majority of Americans are hostile to any intervention in the Indo-Chinese conflict.”