TV Interview With De Gaulle

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30933, 14 December 1965, Page 21

TV Interview With De Gaulle

(N.Z.P.A. Reuter—Copyright) PARIS, December 13. President de Gaulle will be interviewed by a journalist on television tonight as campaigning for next Sunday’s second ballot of the French presidential election intensifies.

The President will be interviewed for half an hour by Mr Michel Droit, editor of the weekly “Figaro Litteraire.”

Immediately after the interview, the Left-wing candidate. Mr Francois Mitterrand, is scheduled to speak. Both candidates will try to attract the 3,777,000 votes given in the first ballot on December 5 to the Centre candidate, Mr Jean Lecanuet

Many French political observers consider Mr Mitterrand to have almost as good a chance of winning the second ballot as President de Gaulle.

The President will try to win back votes he lost to Mr Lecanuet's television personality, his appeal to the young and his upholding of the idea) of a united states of Europe.

President de Gaulle’s interview, as with all political statements during the presidential campaign, has been recorded in advance. Probably the President himself had a hand in framing the questions. Mr Mitterrand said in a radio broadcast last night that the President was trying to conduct a Louis XIV foreign policy rather than one suited to the twentieth century. Replying to a television speech made by President de Gaulle on Saturday in which the President emphasised pro-

gress, independence and peace, Mr Mitterrand emphasised the crisis in the Common Market and asserted that the President’s vaunted independence was a delusion in modern times. He said France’s hopes for the future lay in a united Europe.

“France is absent from the places where peace is being discussed,” Mr Mitterrand said. He was referring to the Geneva disarmament conference which President de Gaulle has declined to attend and the Moscow nuclear testban treaty, which France has refused to sign.