De Gaulle Is Willing

Charles de Gaulle decided last week that before ten days go by, talks should begin between delegations from France and the F.L.N. rebels.

The French delegation will be headed by Algerian Affairs Minister Louis Joxe, 59, and the F.L.N.'s by tough ex-French Army Corporal Belkacem Krim, 37. The probable place: Thonon-les-Bains or a nearby resort on the Lake of Geneva, which lies between France and Switzerland. The lake water is blue and sparkling, the air bracing, the snow-capped Alps rise just beyond. Best of all, these resort towns are only a short boat ride from Montreux in Switzerland, where the F.L.N.'s "provisional" Premier, Ferhat Abbas, has long had an apartment. Thus the talks can take place, as pride demands, in France, but the F.L.N. delegation can live on Swiss territory, free of the French police surveillance that made life miserable for them at last year's abortive talks in Melun.

What was the reason for De Gaulle's new urgency? Cabled TIME Paris Bureau Chief Curt Prendergast:

Although his disdain for professional politicians is boundless (he remarked recently to friends: "What after Algeria? Oh, after! We will be back to po-li-tics"), De Gaulle is not insensitive to those pressures that affect politicians in every age and every country. There has been a steady slide of the major French parties toward opposition, chiefly because of increasing discontent with De Gaulle's domestic austerity. Only the hope that he can solve the Algerian dilemma has protected him. In Algeria itself, he has been influenced by the growing evidence that the Moslems once thought riveted to France can no longer be counted on. are shifting their loyalties to the F.L.N. Last December's Moslem uprisings shook him.

The Nursemaid. But the overriding consideration has been his concern for the future of France. As he is well aware, France can play no significant international role while the Algerian deadlock persists. "This army," he said recently, with rarely voiced affection, "the best that France has had since Napoleon, is wasting its time playing children's nursemaid in Algeria, when its place is on the Rhine and in the laboratory." And so long as Algeria remains unsettled, France cannot play the grand role De Gaulle envisions for it in international politics. The Arab world remains hostile, and the danger that the Red Chinese and the Russians may replace France as the chief force in North Africa haunts Paris.

De Gaulle closely questioned a recent Tunisian emissary on this very point. To another visitor, De Gaulle made clear his willingness to build up the stature of Ferhat Abbas in the F.L.N. as a counterpoise to the extremists. But his personal estimate of Abbas, a onetime druggist from the arid plateau country south of Bougie, is not high. "The pharmacist of Setif," he remarked, "would have made a barely passable Radical deputy--sort of an Algerian Queuille."* Executed Settlement. De Gaulle is moving cautiously toward an eventual face-to-face meeting with Ferhat Abbas. De Gaulle no longer demands a cease-fire before opening the talks, but no political discussion will be undertaken until shooting does in fact stop in Algeria. But guess is that both sides will simply suspend hostilities by tacit agreement when the talks start. Charles de Gaulle has no doubts of success. To a group of French intellectuals last week he said with imperial finality: "The Algerian affair is settled, finished. All that remains is the problem of executing the settlement."

* Henri Queuille, one of the least memorable of France's 19 postwar Premiers, most famed for his gift for immobilisme, i.e., the ability to avoid hard decisions.

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