DE GAULLE IN ALGERIA

Press, Volume XCIX, Issue 29384, 10 December 1960, Page 13

DE GAULLE IN ALGERIA

Army Holds Key To Success Of Plans (N.Z. Press Association—Copyright) \ (Rec. 11 p.m.) ALGIERS, December 9. President de Gaulle arrived in Algeria today on one of the most difficult and possibly dangerous missions of his career. For the next six days he will try to sell his plan for giving Algerians self-government and, possibly later, independence. Diehard settlers, Army officers and even more extreme nationalists among the Algerian Moslem masses bitterly oppose him. Crowds of demonstrators are out in the streets of Algiers and Oran and there have been numerous clashes with police this morning, but attempts to throw up barricades were frustrated and the strike call by the settlers has been only partly heeded.

Authorities admit that in spite of the presence of 6000 gendarmes and riot police and the disorganstate of the European Rightwing movements, a coup d’etat could be attempted. Government officials warned that shops that failed to open, in answer to the strike call, would be seized for up to 30 days. Food dealers were told to consider themselves requisitioned by the Army and to stay open or face military discipline. The President will avoid big cities like Algiers, Oran and Constantine, which are the centres of the settlers’ discontent, and will concentrate on smaller towns with Moslem majorities. He will also spend a good part of his time talking with military officers and men in the field.

Authorities dismiss the possibility of concerted action by disgruntled settlers during the visit. Most Right-wing European movements have been shattered and their leaders arrested or expelled since the abortive rising against General de Gaulle last January. But the possibility of some desperate effort by the Right-wingers, who have been operating underground for the last 10 months, is not excluded. Attitude Of Army The Right-wingers hope for complicity—or at least inactivity —by the Army. This has been the subject of heated discussions in the Algiers garrison, where some officers do not . hide their opposition to President de Gaulle’s policy of aiming to establish a Moslem-run Algerian State.

The Army’s attitude so far has been opposed to any violent action staged by European settlers in Algeria. “It is easy to seize the Government buildings,” one officer said. “But what happens the next day?” Adding fuel to the discontent will be the proposed January 8 referendum on President de Gaulle’s intention to set up some form of Algerian government run by Algerians themselves until such time as the fighting ceases and the territory can choose its own political future. A number of Europeans in Algiers appear to have become reconciled to the idea of Algeria’s evolution on the lines of the de Gaulle plan. Many settlers who. two years ago, vowed to keep Algeria French at all costs, now admit the inevitability of the North African territory’s autonomy and even independence. General de Gaulle and his Cabinet put the final seal on the “Algerian Algeria” plans at a three-hour meeting last night.

The Minister of Information (Mr Louis Terrenoie) announced that the Council of Ministers had approved the text of the draft law on self-determination in Algeria, and the introduction of provisional institutions there prior to self-determination. The draft law will be submitted to the January referendum. The question to be put to the French people at the referendum was released in Paris. It reads: “Do you approve the bill submitted to the French people by the President of the Republic for the self-determination of the

Algerian populations and the organisation of public. powers in Algeria prior to self-determina-tion?”

The decree said that the voters would have to answer a simple “yes” or “no” to the question as a whole. There was no provision for separate answers to the two sections of the question. The terms of the Algerian bill on which the referendum is based said that the vote for selfdetermination by the Algerian populations would be held “as soon as security conditions in Algeria permit the re-establish-ment there of the full exercise of public liberties,”—that is, when the fighting and terrorism stop.