FRENCH SUEZ POLICY

Press, Volume XCIV, Issue 28158, 22 December 1956, Page 11

FRENCH SUEZ POLICY

Assembly Gives Approval

PARIS, December 20.

The French National Assembly today approved the Governments foreign policy by 332 votes to 213 after a three-day debate which today included a determined defence by the Prime Minister (Mr Guy Mollet) of the Anglo-French action in Egypt. Mr Mollet, answering charges that the Government had not informed the United States in advance of its intended action, said that France no longer wanted to experience “those periods of waiting as we did from 1914 to 1917, and from 1940 to 1942."’

Several speakers, including a former Prime Minister, Mr Edgar Faure. condemned the Suez action, but said they would vote for the Government because of the Algerian situation. Referring to the French action against Egypt. Mr Mollet said: “What guided us was a sort of anti-Munich reflex. “We thought that France did not have the right to make the same mistake twice.”

In reply to Mr Faure, the French Prime Minister said: “You accuse us of not warning the Americans. On July 27 (after the nationalisation of the Suez Canal Company), we were convinced that this was only a first step by Egypt. We then warned the Americans that we would not tolerate a second initiative of this kind. “The one point of which we did not warn the United Sta'|?s was the last-minute decision to take military action because we were convinced that the United States Government would have urged upon us the holding of a new conference, that there would have been more delay and that the State of Israel would then have been in danger of disappearin Mr Mollet added: “The most important result of the Suez affair for me is to have made the free world conscious of the menace which was being organised against it.”