CAMPAIGNING IN EARNEST

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30934, 15 December 1965, Page 21

CAMPAIGNING IN EARNEST

(N.Z.P. A. Reuter—Copyright) PARIS, December 14. President de Gaulle, campaigning with a vengeance for another seven-year term, last night made an appeal to farmers, promised France continued economic health, and attacked the United States for exporting inflation.

President de Gaulle put the accent on domestic economics while his Left-wing opponent, Mr Francois Mitterrand, continued to hammer away at Gaullist foreign policy, which he described as opportunist and a failure. Both men appeared on television last night for the second time in their battle for votes in nex* Sunday’s run-off ballot of the French Presidential election. The President, facing a journalist on television for the first time, denied holding

France’s bread-and-butter questions in disdain. He said French prices had risen only 2} per cent a year since his return to power in 1958, and promised to hold this rate to 1| per cent next year. “There is no country in Western Europe where prices are rising as slowly as in France." de Gaulle said, adding that prices were slow to rise in America “because the United States with the help of the so-called gold exchange standard has the possibility of exporting her inflation.**