The Accused

Composed and carefully groomed, Premier Felix Gaillard rose from his front-row chair in France's National Assembly last week and assured his countrymen that the bombing of Sakiet-Sidi-Youssef constituted a display of "exemplary patience." By the time Gaillard spoke, dozens of foreign diplomats and journalists had visited Sakiet-Sidi-Youssef and confirmed Tunisian reports that a high percentage of the 209 casualties (79 dead, 130 wounded) inflicted by the French air force were women and children. Blandly ignoring these facts, Gaillard insisted that "the majority of the victims were soldiers of the Algerian F.L.N." and that, in.any case, responsibility for the attack must be laid at the door of Tunisia's President Habib Bourguiba for allowing Algerian rebel forces to use Sakiet as a base of operations. "It is evident," ended Gaillard coolly, "that the French government does not recognize culpability in this affair."

Even in France's myopically nationalistic Assembly, there were a few men who found this hard to swallow. But when the most notable of the dissenters, ex-Premier Pierre Mendes-France, rose to speak, he was showered with right-wing catcalls of "Jew" and "traitor." In the end the duly elected representatives of the French people approved the bombing of Sakiet-Sidi-Youssef by a vote of 339 to 179. Of the 179 nays, all but 31 came from Communists or fellow travelers.

A Leader for the Parade. France's intransigence put pro-Western Habib Bourguiba squarely on the spot. Appearing in the streets of Tunis, he was greeted by outraged crowds shouting. "Give us arms! Give us arms!" L'Action, official organ of Bourguiba's Neo-Destour Party, editorialized: "To be respected in 1958 one can no longer be a friend of the West. The day that Bourguiba decides to follow the path set by Nehru, Tito and Nasser, Tunisia will no longer be lied about and attacked. She will be wooed." Cooed Beirut's El Massa: "Turn to Cairo, 0 Habib. Turn to the Arab Republic, to the camp of neutralism and to dignity and sovereignty."

A politician with a barometric response to popular mood, shrewd Habib Bourguiba recognized that his only hope of heading off a national swing to neutralism lay in putting himself at the head of the anti-French parade. Bourguiba ordered 400 French civilians out of the Tunisian-Algerian border area "for security reasons," demanded that France close five of her ten consulates in Tunisia, directed his U.N. delegation to request an immediate Security Council debate on the Sakiet-Sidi-Youssef bombing. In his most drastic move he also demanded immediate withdrawal of the 22,000 troops that France has been permitted to leave in Tunisia even after the establishment of full Tunisian independence in 1956.

Moving enthusiastically to enforce Bourguiba's order confining all French soldiers to barracks, Tunisian National Guardsmen threw up roadblocks, and armed civilians dug slit trenches around France's ten Tunisian bases. Three men set up a machine gun at the canal at the entrance to the great naval base of Bizerte to bar the entrance of further French vessels. At other bases, food supplies were shut off. When a French diplomat formally requested permission to revictual the garrison, Vice Premier Bahi Ladgham told him coldly: "Leave Tunisia and you can find all the food you need." Should the French try to force their way in or out of the bases, warned Bourguiba, "it will mean war." Breathing defiance, he took to the radio to proclaim: "Today I am the President of the Republic, but I will be the first to join the Maquis." Typically, he added in the next breath: "Tunisia is always ready to turn the page."

. . . And Our Sacred Interests. Bourguiba, whose ill-equipped army of 6,200 men could not conceivably stand up to a serious French attack, was taking a major gamble. "I have promised the Tunisian people that the French army will go," said he. "If I fail, I will be swept away." Clearly, any successor in such circumstances would be far more hostile to France and the West.

The French press all but forgot the bombing in their outrage at Bourguiba's move. Foreign Minister Christian Pineau announced that France had offered to negotiate withdrawal of her forces from Tunisia, but only if Bourguiba ceased his "pressure and provocation." Declared Pineau grandiloquently: "France intends to defend her interests, and the Tunisian government must understand their sacred character." To offset Bourguiba's U.N. appeal, Pineau lodged a countercomplaint with the Security Council, charging, accurately enough, that Tunisia had permitted Algerian rebels to operate from Tunisian soil. Said Pineau: "We are the accusers."

Second Thoughts. All week long France's allies worked feverishly to find a solution that would save face all around. In New York members of Britain's U.N. delegation scurried about trying to drum up support for a demilitarized Tunisian-Algerian border patrolled by a force similar to the UNEF in Gaza. One obvious objection to this scheme: it would severely handicap the Algerian rebels by depriving them of their privileged sanctuary and would thereby damage Bourguiba's prestige with his countrymen, the bulk of whom ardently support the rebel cause. In Paris U.S. Ambassador Amory Houghton urged moderation on Felix Gaillard, and in Tunis Ambassador Lewis Jones did the same with Bourguiba. At week's end Secretary John Foster Dulles, who had summoned French Ambassador Herve Alphand to his home the day after the Sakiet bombing, prepared to interrupt a long-planned vacation to take personal charge of U.S. efforts to ease the crisis.

Slowly tempers cooled. In Tunisia, Habib Bourguiba relaxed his blockade of French bases enough to permit the entry of civilian trucks carrying food. In Paris, too, there were second thoughts. From the start Foreign Minister Pineau had been privately dismayed by the attack on Sakiet. (When U.S. Columnist Joseph Alsop quoted him as calling the bombing "a sad error," Pineau at first flatly denied the quote, then admitted, "I may have said a few imprudent words" which Alsop had "distorted.")

Under sharp questioning from the National Assembly's Foreign Affairs Committee, Pineau finally admitted that neither the Cabinet nor Robert Lacoste, France's Minister Resident in Algeria, had known in advance of the decision to attack Sakiet-Sidi-Youssef. Neither, apparently, had General Raoul Salan, the luckless Indo-China veteran who commands French forces in Algeria. The murderous blow that earned France worldwide obloquy had been ordered by a local air force officer, reportedly a colonel, on the strength of an imprecise government directive authorizing retaliatory attack on Algerian rebel concentrations in the immediate frontier areas bordering on Tunisia.

Away from the Ring. At week's end Felix Gaillard's government made a first gesture toward conciliation. Though it refused to match Bourguiba's offer to accept U.S. mediation--this, the French fear, would open the way to international "interference" in the Algerian rebellion--the Gaillard government announced that it was now willing to accept "the good offices" of the U.S. in settling the dispute. Even more important psychologically, Gaillard and his Cabinet tacitly admitted France's guilt at Sakiet-Sidi-Youssef by offering to pay damages to civilian victims of the bombing.

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