O.A.S. Reacts Violently To De Gaulle 9s Speech

Press, Volume CI, Issue 29742, 8 February 1962, Page 9

O.A.S. Reacts Violently To De Gaulle 9 s Speech

(N.Z J?.A.-Reuter—-Copyright) ORAN, February 7. A shipboard explosion killed at least four persons, another blast rocked Algiers City Hall, and a daring masked band seized an Oran newspaper yesterday as the European Secret Army Organisation reacted violently to President de Gaulle’s promise of Algerian peace, the Associated Press reported.

The 6541-ton French Line steamship, Ville de Bordeaux, with a capacity of 1000 passengers, was shaken by a violent explosion as it was leaving its dock at Bone with a company of riot police returning to France. Authorities suspected a bomb had been hidden in a oar loaded on the ship. Algiers City Hall was racked shortly before noon by a T.N.T. explosion in a lift. Most employees were out to lunch and no injuries were reported. Government sources said French troops surrounded and captured a strong 40man commando unit named Bonaparte in eastern Algeria, the Associated Press report said. The group was identified as one of the three major field units of the terroristic underground Secret Army Organisation (0.A.5.) which is fighting to keep Algeria French. Expensive Newspaper The British United Press reported that the world’s dearest newspaper was on sale in Oran yesterday. People were paying up to 15s for a pirate copy of “L’Echo d'Oran,” which masked O.A.S. gunmen forced the newspaper staff to produce on Monday night. About 30 O.A.S. men entered the newspaper building in two’s and three’s and made their way down to the presses. Pointing guns at the linotype operators, they handed them already prepared material. The “special OA.S. edition" contained the text of a speech by the former General, Edmond Jouhaud, one of the “French Algeria” leaders.

The authorities closed down the two biggest newspapers in Oran until further notice after the OA.S. raid on ‘‘L’Echo d'Oran.” The British United Press reported that the director for Algeria of the State-run French radio and television service (Mr Jean Oudinot) was shot and seriously wounded while driving in central Algiers yesterday. His Moslem chauffeur was killed. Reuter reported from Paris that the French Government was preparing to issue an official report on the proposals it has put to the Algerian insurgents for a peaceful settle m e n t of Algeria’s future. Officials said the time of publication would depend on whether the Algerian insurgent leaders accepted or rejected the French proposals, and no answer was expected for another two or three weeks. Rising Anxiety The New Zealand Press Association’s special correspondent in Washington, Frank Oliver, said in a dispatch today that anxiety over Algeria is rising and the United States looks anxiously towards France as she stands on the eve of tremendous events. A sanguinary civil war in Algeria is seen in Washington as a possibility, even a probability, no matter how favourable to France the solution President de Gaulle is working for may be. The “Washington Post" says that unfortunately, the enemies of France are not within the reach of the soldiers and tanks surrounding Paris. “Her enemies

have put the city under a siege more like a spell, and have summoned to their service such evil spirits as lurk in the dark, the recesses of every country’s past. These neurotic wraiths unfortunately are invincible to the coercion of either arms or logic.” The possibility of dissident forces in France using terror to set off an ascending cycle of violence and repression is regarded by the newspaper as “an utterly appalling prospect” There is nothing, it adds, that America or the West can do to work the cure upon which President de Gaulle labours. For the moment, all that can be done by those who love France is to hope that the agony of Algiers may end, so that France can rise from its past and embrace its future. The “New York Times” says that, in spite of his rigidity and formidable selfwill, President de Gaulle is a man of vision, and it refuses to believe that a few thousand terrorists, “some of them frankly fascist,” can overthrow the Fifth Republic. “Today’s France will rise out of its prosperity and bitter memories and out of its fragmentation of parties to stand by President de Gaulle in these days of peril,” says the “New York Times.”