Arms to Tunisia
HAHN, LORNA
Behind the U. S.-British decision to ship Arms to Tunisia By Lorna Hahn On November 14, after two months of soul-searching, the State Department announced that the United States and Great Britain...
...This explains her continued efforts to act as mediator in the Algerian conflict...
...Tunisian leaders first suspected this last July, when France hinted that withdrawal of its troops from Tunisia would have serious consequences...
...Because its Western frontier is with Algeria, Tunisia has been subject to frequent French incursions since the Algerian rebellion began...
...Indeed, the suggestion that U.S...
...Dulles made this commitment definite on October 2 in a long chat with Ladgham...
...If France was angry, she was told, she could put a stop to these shipments by sending arms to Tunisia herself—without the previously demanded condition that Tunisia promise not to accept other arms from any other country...
...The National Liberation Front," wryly remarked Tunisian Secretary of State and Defense Bahi Ladgham, "is far better off than we can hope to be for a long, long time...
...But France termed this an "unpardonable,'' "humiliating" gesture which could wreck the North Atlantic Treaty Organization...
...In September, however, Secretary of Defense Andre Morice announced that henceforth France would exercise the international right of "hot pursuit": French Army units would follow Algerians into Tunisia and continue fighting there if necessary...
...Several Tunisians, including Secretary for Foreign Affairs Khemais Hajeri, were thus killed or gravely wounded...
...Both concluded that they had to ship the arms themselves as soon as possible...
...The Tunisian Army, numbering barely 6,000, has only 3,000 rifles and less than three cartridges per man...
...The next morning, Tunisia's President Habib Bourguiba and his cabinet went to A1 Aouina airport to welcome the first shipments: 350 submachine guns and 70 Bren guns from Britain, and 500 semi-automatic rifles with 50,000 rounds of ammunition from America...
...If these charges were beyond doubt, France might have legitimate grounds for complaint...
...As Tunis saw it, this was part of a definite plot hatched by certain military officials, with the cooperation of politicians like Morice and Robert Lacoste, to provoke enough French-Tunisian friction to justify a large-scale invasion...
...If anything, it's they who should be giving arms to us, not vice versa...
...Behind the U. S.-British decision to ship Arms to Tunisia By Lorna Hahn On November 14, after two months of soul-searching, the State Department announced that the United States and Great Britain would send some arms to the Republic of Tunisia...
...These efforts, however, were insufficient, and the first week of September brought the hot-pursuit episodes...
...arms would be given to the Algerians is something of a bad joke where Tunisia is concerned...
...Tunisia did everything possible—short of asking the Soviet bloc for arms—to strengthen its fledgling army and reinforce its border defenses...
...The 40,000-man Algerian army has been amply supplied from Egyptian, Italian and renegade French sources...
...The token delivery, worth less than $100,000, hardly seems worthy of much attention...
...It was at this point that Bourguiba and Ladgham told American Ambassador Lewis Jones that they needed arms immediately...
...Moreover, Tunisia—in direct defiance of Egyptian dictator Gamal Abdel Nasser's pan-Arab ambitions—is trying to form a Western-linked North African confederation composed of itself, Morocco, Algeria and Libya...
...The sending of arms to Tunisia helps the most pro-Western country in the Moslem world to keep its self-respect without having to look to Moscow...
...When Belgium and Italy, under pressure from France, kept procrastinating, Washington decided to consult with London...
...its much-publicized "arms" from Egypt consisted merely of a few hundred small sidearms...
...Invasions involving large numbers of French soldiers and even strafings from French airplanes followed...
...Until last summer, these were limited to small groups of French soldiers who, chasing Algerian fellaghas, crossed into Tunisia and skirmished with Tunisian soldiers and civilians...
...Paris claimed that because Tunisia was insisting on withdrawal of the 30,000 French troops stationed there, the Algerian-Tunisian border would be open to Algerians trying to escape French pursuers and Fiance could not allow this...
...But the sending of a few guns to Tunisia had no relation to any U.S...
...This began the flurry of discussions between Washington and Paris, Paris and Tunis, Tunis and Washington...
...It further charged that the move signals an effort by Washington to "arm the Arabs," and that the arms will be shunted to the Algerian rebels now battling French forces...
...policy of arming or not arming "the Arabs" who seek either to attack Israel or to protect themselves against the intrigues of fellow Arabs...
...The State Department, trying to steer a middle course, decided to ask Belgium and Italy—with whom Tunisia had already engaged in discussions—to send arms...
...It is also strengthening Bourguiba's position throughout all of North Africa, thus making it easier for him to proceed with his plans for a pro-Western confederation...
Vol. 40 • December 1957 • No. 48
