The Coming of Boum

For France, it was a time of anxious waiting. At Melun, 30 miles southeast of Paris, official representatives of France and of Algeria's Moslem rebels met for the first time in 5 1/2 years. On the outcome of their talks hung the hopes of an end to the Algerian war.

For days, Algeria's rebels had backed and filled over Charles de Gaulle's renewed and more generous offer of peace negotiations (TIME, June 27). At first they refused to fly in an official French plane. Then, taking passage in a Tunis Air DC-4, the rebels finally dispatched a three-man "advance guard" headed by Ahmed Boumendjel, 52, who is "Premier"' Ferhat Abbas' version of Jim Hagerty. When their plane finally landed at Orly (one engine conked out en route), the rebel delegates were hastily whisked off by helicopter to Melun, where Roger Moris, De Gaulle's Secretary of State for Algeria, was waiting.

Few men better personify the tragic ironies of the Algerian revolt than burly, jovial Ahmed Boumendjel. A onetime Paris lawyer and councilor of the French Union, Boumendjel has hundreds of friends among French politicians and journalists, to whom he is affectionately known as "Boum." A latecomer to the rebel cause, he joined Algeria's Front de Liberation Nationale only after his younger brother died during "interrogation" by French paratroopers in Algiers in 1956. Presumably, his mission would serve incidentally to give Boumendjel a chance to see his French wife and two teen-age daughters, whom he left behind in Paris when he joined the F.L.N.

But Boumendjel's prime task was to find out whether, if Ferhat Abbas himself came to Paris, he could be sure of negotiating with De Gaulle personally. To the rebels, this was far more than a matter of prestige; the rebels have made it plain that they will not agree to a cease-fire unless De Gaulle makes good on his implicit promise to give the F.L.N. an opportunity to participate in the political referendum that will determine Algeria's future. But only hours after the rebels accepted De Gaulle's negotiation offer, Premier Michel Debre himself put out the word that French negotiators would refuse to talk politics until after the F.L.N. agreed to lay down arms. Other government officials repeatedly assured reporters that nothing would come of the talks.

Late last week De Gaulle cracked down on this insubordination, ordered his Ministers to keep silent about the negotiations. "Over the Algerian affair," said De Gaulle icily, "the people of Metropolitan France are entirely behind me."

As Ahmed Boumendjel and his bosses clearly recognized, the only man in the French government with both the desire and the capacity to give the people of France and Algeria the peace they so desperately want is Charles de Gaulle himself.

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