CEASE-FIRE IN ALGERIA

Press, Volume XCVIII, Issue 28795, 16 January 1959, Page 9

CEASE-FIRE IN ALGERIA

Offer By De Gaulle Expected

(N.Z. Press Association—Copyright)

(Rec. 9.30 p.m.) LONDON, January 15. Hopes were rising that the war in Algeria was nearing its end, several London newspapers said in reports from Paris today.

They sprang mainly from President de Gaulle’s clemency to the Algerian rebels, which was widely regarded in Paris as aimed at opening the way for peace talks.

Some French contacts were believed to have been made with the insurgent leaders but the outcome was uncertain, said the “Daily Telegraph.” The Algerian rebel “Government” in Cairo had been sitting for four days, considering policy. There was growing belief in Paris that President de Gaulle would propose cease-fire talks in his message today to the Fifth Republic’s new National Assembly, meeting for the first time.

Some of the men who as the Algiers Committee of Public Safety helped put General de Gaulle in power last May, last night accused him of betraying France, according to the “Daily Mail.”

They were angry at his decision to reprieve 180 terrorists awaiting execution and to release 7000 detainees.

But, according to “The Times,” President de Gaulle’s clemency was well received by most sections of opinion in France and had not yet aroused the storm expected in Algiers. The two leading Government parties, the Gaullist Union for the New Republic and the Conservatives. yesterday echoed a call by Algerian Deputies to make the new Algeria “an integral part of France.” “No Great Importance” But Parliamentary observers did not attach great importance to this. They said the main emphasis in the resolution passed by the Deputies commanding a majority in the Assembly seemed to be on “the maintenance of Algeria in the framework of French sovereignty.” The new French Government, unlike the Governments of the Fourth Republic, need not obtain an initial vote of confidence from the Assembly today. It will have no trouble in getting a big majority to endorse the policy which the x Premier (Mr Michel Debre) will outline. The Algiers Public Safety Committee yesterday accused President de Gaulle of deliberately being ambiguous on the future of Algeria, “so as better to neutralise the resistance of the people and the Army to any decision of abandon.” A motion passed at a special meeting of the committee asked the people of Algiers to consider themselves in a permanent state of alert until the effective recognition of Algeria and the Sahara as French provinces.