Still-Secret Formulas; Chartreuse: Only Monks Do It Right
ST. PIERRE DE CHARTREUSE, FRANCE - Chartreuse liqueur is not distilled and stored there, in any case. A company owned by the monastery produces, stores and markets Chartreuse and its variations from a distillery in the town of Voiron 15 miles to the west. Young women in chartreuse-colored dresses take tourists on guided tours past the enormous barrels in the storage cellars and the ovens in the distillery, but the tourists...
January 3, 1986

Paris to Get Park In France, It's Vive Le Disneyland
PARIS - On top of this, French intellectuals have long respected and even revered Walt Disney and his art. That makes it extremely difficult for them to reject a Disney product even if, deep down, they understand that Disneyland is a far lesser intellectual achievement than the early Mickey Mouse cartoons like "Steamboat Willy." To be sure, Walt Disney Productions may run into problems building Disneyland in...
January 7, 1986

Britain, France Plan Channel Rail Tunnels
LILLE, FRANCE - In a decision that could break the historic and geographic isolation of Britain, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and President Francois Mitterrand of France announced approval Monday of an enormous $6.6-billion project to realize an engineering dream of old - the linking of Britain to France by two railroad tunnels beneath the English Channel. In Britain, the decision to build only rail tunnels was regarded as a kind...
January 21, 1986

Greenpeace Affair Tarnished Fabius; French Political Star's Meteoric Rise and Fall
PARIS - The second problem arose in October. [Laurent Fabius], fresh from an oratorical triumph at the Socialist Party Congress in Toulouse, took on Mayor Jacques Chirac of Paris in a nationally televised debate. Chirac, a former premier who is leader of the right-wing Gaullist party, hopes to win control of enough seats in the next Parliament to force [Francois Mitterrand] to name him premier in March...
January 23, 1986

Portugal Rightist Favored in Today's Presidential Vote
LISBON - With the country still exuberant about democratic elections, Diogo Freitas do Amaral, long regarded as the most conservative major politician in revolutionary Portugal, was expected to leave three squabbling and badly divided leftist candidates far behind in today's first round of voting in the Portuguese presidential elections. In a sharp break with the past, all four candidates for president are civilians. For the first time...
January 26, 1986

Portuguese Conservative Wins 1st Round But Falls Short of Majority Vote and Will Face Soares in Runoff
LISBON - Socialist Mario Soares, Portugal's prime minister three times and its best-known politician outside the country, held off a challenge from two other leftist candidates to finish second and earn the right to oppose [Diogo Freitas] do Amaral in a runoff election scheduled Feb. 16. In the second round, Freitas do Amaral will be favored because Soares, in the view of most analysts, will have a...
January 27, 1986

Europe Vows to Continue Space Efforts Despite Doubts
PARIS - Whatever impact it has on the European manned space program in the long run, the American accident is sure to enhance the European unmanned space program in the short run. The European rocket Ariane has proven a stiff competitor to the U.S. space shuttle in the market for launching satellites. By the end of 1984, the Ariane had captured 40% of the market. By mid-1985...
January 30, 1986

French Debate the Power of a President
PARIS - At the same time, [Raymond Barre] insists that it would be impossible for a Socialist president and a conservative premier to work together under the constitution. For these reasons, Barre says, [Francois Mitterrand] should resign if his party is defeated in March. Premier Laurent Fabius, in a recent television interview, seemed to agree somewhat with Barre's analysis, though not, of course, with Barre's solution. If...
OPINION
February 2, 1986

City's Alfama Quarter In Lisbon, Poverty Is Picturesque
LISBON - In 1755, an earthquake devastated Lisbon. The Marques of Pombal, the minister of King Jose I, rebuilt the city, laying down wide carriageways, great plazas and rows of sturdy and elegant housing. Much of it is peeling, dusty, even tattered now, but Lisbon has retained the bustle, the character and the architecture of the old Pombal era downtown in a way that has eluded many...
February 4, 1986

9 Injured in Another Bombing in Paris
PARIS - Mayor Jacques Chirac of Paris, the former premier who is leading his right-wing opposition party in the current campaign for the March 16 parliamentary elections, issued an angry statement insisting that "Paris has become a privileged target of terrorism." Sen. Charles Pasqua, one of Chirac's political colleagues, blamed "the ineffectiveness of the Ministry of Interior and the impotence of the (Socialist) government" for allowing the...
February 6, 1986

Allocation of Funds in France Embarrassing
PARIS - The allocation of funds, however, had nothing to do with what the Reagan Administration really believed or with what U.S. officials really thought. In Paris, an embarrassed American Embassy quickly issued a statement that said, in effect, "Don't blame the U.S. government." The U.S. decision to fight for democracy in France reflected the influence and philosophy of a private American citizen and a private organization...
February 6, 1986

Duvalier Reaches Temporary Asylum in Southeastern France
PARIS - [Jean-Claude Duvalier] and his family own four homes in France and in the principality of Monaco, but neither Grenoble nor Lake Annecy is close to any of them. French news reports suggested that the government had diverted the Air Force plane there to keep Duvalier from landing in the Paris area, where his presence might provoke trouble from leftist groups and the small Haitian community...
February 8, 1986

France Seeks Asylum Nation for Duvalier
PARIS - A group of extreme leftists and Haitian exiles called a protest demonstration in the French capital against the government Saturday afternoon. One protester held up a hand-drawn cartoon that showed [Francois Mitterrand] giving [Jean-Claude Duvalier] a rose of welcome. "Shame to Mitterrand," the sign said. But with Duvalier so far away from Paris, the turnout of no more than 300 people was feeble. Duvalier, 34...
February 9, 1986

Close Race Expected in Portugal's Presidential Election
PARIS - His opponent, Socialist Mario Soares, 61, a former prime minister who is the best known Portuguese politician outside Portugal, has managed to win the endorsement, at least in principle, of all the leftist candidates who took part in the first round and of almost all the leftist parties. Soares finished second in that round with 25% of the vote, far behind [Freitas]. But the leftist...
February 15, 1986

Portuguese Elect Soares as President
LISBON - The defeat of [Diogo Freitas] do [Amaral] was a defeat as well for Prime Minister Anibal Cavaco Silva, who had campaigned alongside Freitas do Amaral and whose centrist Social Democratic Party had organized most of the conservative's rallies. Cavaco Silva had insisted that only the election of Freitas do Amaral could ensure stable government for Portugal. The relations between the two men have been tense...
February 17, 1986

Threat to Culture Feared; North Africa Immigrants a Volatile Issue in France
MARSEILLES, FRANCE - This downtown neighborhood of mosques, of cafes monopolized by men, of bazaars that sell World Cup soccer sweat shirts with Arabic lettering, is known officially as the Belsunce, but many people in Marseilles bitterly call it the Casbah, after the famous Arab quarter of Algiers in the days when the French ruled Algeria. No one who shops in the department stores downtown can miss the...
February 18, 1986

French-Speaking Nations Open Summit; Mitterrand Says Language Must Have Role in New Technology
PARIS - President Francois Mitterrand of France, warning that French identity is threatened in the modern world, Monday opened the long-delayed first summit of leaders of French-speaking countries in the Palace of Versailles, itself the product of an era when the French language dominated the civilized world. The idea of a French-speaking conference, first proposed in 1962 by Leopold Senghor, then President of Senegal, has languished for...
February 18, 1986

French Force Sent to Chad; Paris Blames Libya for Airport Bombing There
PARIS - [Paul Quiles] did say that a Jaguar fighter-bomber and two Mirage F-1 jet interceptors were moved to N'Djamena on Monday and that more planes were on the way. He also said that France has sent anti-aircraft units to N'Djamena and 200 commandos to guard military aircraft coming into [Chad]. In September 1984, France and Libya signed an agreement providing for each to withdraw its troops...
February 18, 1986

French-Speaking Nations Decide Against Commonwealth-Style Ties
PARIS - Asked about the proposals for a French commonwealth, [Francois Mitterrand] told a news conference, "I'm not sure that the British Commonwealth and our French community are comparable. In any case, we are not trying to imitate the Commonwealth. Some leaders have publicly advocated something similar. But we really did not deliberate about it at this meeting. The important thing is that we have tightened our...
February 20, 1986

France Still Pressing Duvalier to Seek Asylum in Liberia Despite Rejection There
PARIS - [Jean-Claude Duvalier] was flown from Haiti aboard a U.S. Air Force plane on Feb. 7 to what was described as temporary asylum in France. French officials talked of his remaining about eight days, and French tempers have grown short, both at Duvalier and, at times, at the United States, over Duvalier's continuing presence in France. It is understood that French officials have threatened to hand...
February 21, 1986

French Hail Best of Film With Cesar
PARIS - The [CESAR] is a heavy, squat, expressionistic sculpture that looks somewhat like a wrecked car that has been squashed together in a junkyard. Recalling that [Bette Davis] had won two Oscars, [Olivia de Havilland] told Davis, "Judging by its weight, I would say that one Cesar is worth two Oscars." Countering this pessimism, "[Trois Hommes] et Un Couffin" has evoked a good deal of optimism...
ENTERTAINMENT
February 25, 1986

Seduction Still Works; French - a Language in Decline
PARIS - Take the case of Senegal. The French ruled it for almost 300 years, until 1960. It was a favored colony: The Africans of its four main towns had had the right to vote in French elections since the French Revolution. The politician who led Senegal to independence, former President Leopold Senghor, is a French poet who now sits in the French Academy. French is the...
March 1, 1986

Duvalier Ordered Out - but Will Go to Riviera
PARIS - It is not clear how restricted [Jean-Claude Duvalier], his wife, and their six children will be by the order that officially "assigns him to residence" in the village of St. Vallier de Thiey near the town of Grasse in the French administrative district of Alpes-Maritimes. But he definitely will not be allowed to leave the district. Duvalier, who is trying to force France to keep...
March 7, 1986

Anti-Americanism Clouds Spanish Vote; Support of Franco for Use of Bases Figures in NATO Referendum
MADRID - Moreover, anti-Americanism was galvanized by President [Reagan Evoked Protest]'s visit to Spain last May. Tens of thousands of Spaniards marched in Madrid on the eve of the visit in protest against Reagan, the United States, the American bases and NATO. The large turnout surprised U.S. officials and persuaded leaders of anti-NATO organizations that a powerful force of anti-Americanism in Spain could be channeled against alliance...
March 9, 1986

Mitterrand's Rise in Polls May Boost Vote for Socialists
PARIS - The publication of polls is banned by law in France during the last week of the campaign, and the last two polls, distributed by the newspaper Le Figaro and the magazine Paris-Match, were mainly taken before a long television interview March 2 in which Socialist President Francois Mitterrand made his case for a Parliament that would support him. The 30% figure is considered significant because...
March 10, 1986

France Resists Kidnaper Demands, Fears New Violence
PARIS - Even while proclaiming the government's defiance of the kidnapers, the premier said that France has never refused to open discussions on the issue with "those of good faith." Earlier in the day, the government sent a special envoy, Dr. Razah Raad, a Lebanese-born, French physician, to Damascus. It was believed that Raad will travel on to the Syrian-controlled Bekaa Valley of Lebanon to try to...
March 10, 1986

Ruling Party in Trouble Despite Recent Economic Gains; Upturn in France Unlikely to Help Socialists
PARIS - Nevertheless, the conservatives are not shy about deriding the Socialists as poor managers who have run the economy into the ground in the last five years. In a recent campaign speech, former Premier Raymond Barre said the country was "a stagnant France on the decline, an impoverished and worried France, sapped of its strength by the cancer of unemployment." The strategy failed, increasing inflation and...
BUSINESS
March 11, 1986

France's Hostage Crisis Turns Election Into Emotional Test of Socialists' Rule
PARIS - In the televised interview from Beirut after Islamic Jihad released a photo of the body of Seurat, an anguished Mary Seurat said: "I accuse Monsieur Joxe of the responsibility for the execution, the murder of my husband. Hezbollah (a Shia political organization that is believed to use the name Islamic Jihad at times) has executed my husband. Monsieur [Pierre Joxe] had him killed." Since March...
March 13, 1986

Presidential Hopefuls Jockey for Advantage in French Parliamentary Election Drive
PARIS - Judging by the polls, the leading contenders for president are, among the conservatives, [Raymond Barre] and Jacques Chirac, mayor of Paris and a former premier, and, assuming that the 69-year-old [Francois Mitterrand] does not run for reelection, [Michel Rocard] and Premier Laurent Fabius among the Socialists. Chirac wants Mitterrand to stay on. His scenario would be upset if Mitterrand resigned and forced an election now...
March 15, 1986

Salud! Cheers! Na Zdrowie! Times Writers' Concise Correspondents Course in Cosmopolitan Conviviality
PARIS - At the moment, my own favorite is the cocktail lounge in the opulent Ritz Hotel, just off the magnificent Place Vendome. The Ritz has two entrances and three bars, and my favorite is the one just to the left of the Place Vendome entrance. Looking out on a gardened patio, it is warm, sophisticated, subdued and pleasant. You can get a very dry martini, but...
LOS ANGELES TIMES MAGAZINE
March 16, 1986

French Conservatives Win Assembly Control; Parties Take Majority Away From Socialists; Mitterrand Faces Problem in Choice of Premier
PARIS - The victory of the Conservatives was not confirmed until 7 a.m. today when the government announced that with four seats still undecided, the Conservative coalition had won 289 seats, the bare minimum needed for a majority. Since the conservatives failed in their goal of a resounding majority, the results will give [Francois Mitterrand] a good deal of leeway in making his choice of a premier...
March 17, 1986

Mitterrand to Name Premier Today From Ranks of Conservative Victors
PARIS - Taking note of the returns, [Francois Mitterrand] said that the new conservative majority in the French National Assembly is "weak, but it exists." He will therefore name the premier from its ranks today, he said. Mitterrand went on to say that he will "scrupulously follow the constitution" and that there is a need for everyone to sublimate personal interests to the needs of the country...
March 18, 1986

Mitterrand Offers Job of French Premier to Chirac; They Disagree on Conditions
PARIS - Socialist President Francois Mitterrand on Tuesday asked right-wing rival Jacques Chirac to serve as premier of France, but Chirac withheld a reply after the two obviously failed to work out acceptable conditions for governing the country together. It was not clear whether Mitterrand or Chirac had stronger cards to play in their evident test of political wills. Mitterrand's Socialist Party lost control of the National...
March 19, 1986

Mitterrand Vetoes 4 Choices by Chirac for New French Cabinet
PARIS - The French press reported that [Francois Mitterrand], who has the constitutional power to appoint the Cabinet, rejected [Jacques Chirac]'s choices for ministers of external relations, defense, interior and justice. Two of the choices, who had happily informed journalists of their designation earlier in the day, announced with obvious bitterness later that they have asked Chirac to withdraw their nominations. According to French press reports, Mitterrand...
March 20, 1986

Chirac Named French Premier; Cabinet Picked
PARIS - [Jacques Chirac]'s new Cabinet was announced at the Elysee Palace, the presidential palace and residence. Under the constitution, the premier proposes the ministers, but the president appoints them. The list of the Chirac cabinet bore the marks of some [Francois Mitterrand] vetoes. His relations with former President Valery Giscard d'Estaing illustrate some of the turns in Chirac's political career. In 1974, he angered his fellow...
March 21, 1986

From Revolt, a Cuisine; French Rivet Attention on the Palate
PARIS - "I would not call it the greatest cuisine in the world," historian Jean-Louis Flandrin of the University of Paris said. "The Chinese cuisine is greater than that of France. Other European cuisines may even be better than French cuisine. But at least in Europe, French cuisine is the most prestigious." The truly great international reputation of French cuisine did not develop until the 19th Century...
April 1, 1986

French Assembly Supports Chirac Plans Despite Veto Threat from Mitterrand
PARIS - His first proposed action, a series of decrees selling a large number of France's nationalized companies, ran into a constitutional snag. [Francois Mitterrand] told a morning meeting of the [Jacques Chirac] Cabinet that he will refuse to sign any decree selling a company nationalized before he came to power in 1981. Also, he insisted that he will examine closely the decrees on other issues before...
April 10, 1986

Europeans Rebuff Reprisals on Libya, Kohl Sees Kadafi Hand in Berlin Disco Bombing
PARIS - Chancellor Helmut Kohl of West Germany said Friday that there "are a great many indications" that Libya was a conspirator in the terrorist bombing of a West Berlin discotheque last week, but he stood fast with other Western European governments by refusing to support President Reagan on possible reprisals against Libyan leader Moammar Kadafi. West Germany, which spends more than $2 billion a year for ...
April 12, 1986

De Beauvoir, Writer and Feminist, Dies
PARIS - Although [Jean-Paul Sartre], who refused to accept the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1964, may have been better known than his companion in the world's literary and intellectual circles, [Simone de Beauvoir] may have had more readers with "The Second Sex." The work, hailed as a landmark examination of the position of women in a male-dominated world, sold more than 1 million copies in paperback...
April 15, 1986

U.S.-Europe Split Worst Since Vietnam
PARIS - The U.S. raid on Libya created a tense and troublesome split Tuesday between the United States and most of its allies, pushing the United States more out of step with Europe than at any time since the war in Vietnam. Just as [Margaret Thatcher]'s decision to allow American bombers to mount the attack from their British bases was the surest sign of support for the...
April 16, 1986

Fake Paintings; 81 and Ill, Dali Still Confounds
FIGUERAS, SPAIN - The three people closest to Dali now are [Robert Descharnes], who commutes between [Figueras] and his apartment in Paris; Miguel Domenech, a Madrid lawyer, and painter Antoni Pitxot, son of an old friend of Dali. Pitxot lives in nearby Cadaques and sees Dali almost every afternoon. Dali has shown his gratitude by alloting an entire floor of the Dali museum to the works of Pitxot...
April 16, 1986

Experience, Subtlety Stressed Europeans Use Own Style in Coping With Terrorism
PARIS - For decades, Europeans have been forced to come to grips with far more than Arab terrorism. European government[s] have been infuriated and often frustrated by the Irish Republican Army in Northern Ireland, the Basque separatists in Spain, the Baader-Meinhof gang in West Germany, the Red Brigades in Italy, and many other deadly though smaller groups like the Armenian nationalists. Far more Europeans than Americans have...
April 17, 1986

European Ministers Postpone Work on Anti-Terrorist Steps
PARIS - The Dutch foreign minister said that his fellow ministers, believing that "an international endeavor" was needed against terrorism, planned to start contacts with the United States, the Soviet Union, Arab nations, Eastern Europe and the nonaligned countries. In line with this, [Hans van den Broek] met later in the day with [John C. Whitehead]. The foreign ministers may have difficulty agreeing on stronger measures. The...
April 18, 1986

4 Libyans Expelled by France, Paris Smarting for Barring U.S. Warplane Flyover
PARIS - The French government's announcement came after several days in which the government of Premier Jacques Chirac faced attacks from members of his own ruling conservative coalition, including former President Valery Giscard d'Estaing, for refusing the American request that F-111 fighter-bombers be allowed to fly directly from Britain to Libya over France. The French refusal, coupled with a similar stance by Spain, forced the American bombers...
April 19, 1986

Spanish Nationalists, Catalonia: A Benign Bid for Change
BARCELONA, SPAIN - Despite this oppression, the Catalan language survived with strength. Survival was helped by Catalonia's easy acceptance of immigrants who came from other parts of Spain to work in the factories of Barcelona. Unlike Basques, who turned their backs on outsiders from the rest of Spain, the Catalans encouraged the immigrants to speak the Catalan language and absorbed them into Catalan culture. After the death of...
April 26, 1986

British Executive Shot, Killed in France; Arab Group Claims Reprisal
PARIS - Anonymous telephone callers, saying they represented an Arab group, which they did not identify, claimed responsibility for the killing of Kenneth Marston, 43, but police said they are still not certain that the act was a reprisal for last week's American bombing raid on Libya or, in fact, if it was connected in any way to the problems of the Mideast. Meanwhile, in the Marston killing...
April 26, 1986

Envoy Tries to Soothe French on U.S. Anger
PARIS - U.S. Ambassador Joe M. Rodgers tried to soothe French worries over a mounting mood of anti-French resentment in the United States with a statement Monday proclaiming that "the bonds of common values which unite us with France are too important to be put into question" by the French refusal to cooperate with the American bombing of Libya. Paris newspapers have prominently featured accounts of anti-French...
April 29, 1986

Safe Record of Their 44 Power Plants Is Cited, French Unworried Despite Nuclear Dependence
PARIS - France is more dependent on nuclear energy than any other country in the world, yet news of the Soviet nuclear accident does not seem to have frightened the French into worrying about their nation's 44 nuclear power plants. After the oil crisis of 1973, President Valery Giscard d'Estaing was in a position to capitalize on the [Georges Pompidou] decision and accelerate French use of nuclear...
May 1, 1986

Swedish-Soviet Ties Strained, Chernobyl Disaster Could Undermine Stockholm Policy
STOCKHOLM - Swedish anger over the Chernobyl nuclear disaster threatens to undermine the Swedish government's careful campaign over the last two years to improve relations with the Soviet Union. Yet, from the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 until a Soviet submarine ran aground on Swedish soil in 1981, Sweden, proud of its neutrality, maintained good relations with the Soviet Union. In the session with [Mikhail S. Gorbachev], according...
May 3, 1986

No Risk to Health From Fallout, Agency Asserts
PARIS - Speaking on behalf of a committee of experts that met to discuss the impact of the Chernobyl disaster, Klaus Stadie, the deputy director of the Nuclear Energy Agency, said the health issue was not closed. He told a news conference that "a more thorough and comprehensive investigation is planned at a later stage when more data are available for analysis." Asked to explain the qualification...
May 10, 1986

Government Under Fire for Failure to Disclose Radiation Levels, France to Reassure Public on Delay of Fallout Data
PARIS - An embarrassed French government appointed a special Cabinet committee Monday to reassure the French population in the face of a bitter controversy over the government's failure for more than a week to inform the people about the increased radiation coming from the Soviet nuclear plant disaster in Chernobyl. In a scathing editorial, Gerard Dupuy of Liberation, an influential Paris newspaper, accused both the right-wing government...
May 13, 1986

Good Food, Fast Trains; France Has a Taste for Rail Travel
STRASBOURG, FRANCE - "Look at the plane," a child shouted some months ago, pointing through the window of the sleek TGV (as the Trains of Great Speed are called after their initials in French). Travelers could see a small, single-engine plane high in the sky, falling farther behind in its vain attempt to keep up with the train, which reaches 168 m.p.h. on the Paris-to-Lyon line. Although French...
May 16, 1986

. . . and France Now Has Two Heads
PARIS - Polls reveal the confusion: Asked recently who they believed was now the chief executive of France, 41% replied [Jacques Chirac], 40% replied [Francois Mitterrand], and 19% said they did not know. But, whoever is in charge, most French have good feelings about cohabitation - popularity ratings of both Mitterrand and Chirac have soared. In contradiction, Mitterrand aides leaked their account to Le Monde, the influential Paris newspaper. ...
OPINION
May 18, 1986

Controversy Endures Over Gaudi's Puzzling Barcelona Architecture; Gaudi's Puzzling Architecture Gaining New Fame Beyond Barcelona
BARCELONA, SPAIN - Few of the world's great architects are identified with a single city the way Antonio Gaudi is identified with Barcelona. The works of Gaudi, who died 60 years ago, can still startle any visitor, and the towers of his unfinished temple known as the Sagrada Familia have become a symbol of Catalonia's capital much as Paris has the Eiffel Tower and New York the Statue...
May 23, 1986

France Releases Waldheim Army File, Gives No Reason for Scrutiny While He Was U.N. Chief
PARIS - The French government released its file on the World War II army service of Austrian presidential candidate Kurt Waldheim on Friday but did not explain why it had compiled the record in 1979 when Waldheim was still secretary general of the United Nations. Since Waldheim, when faced with similar facts, acknowledged earlier this year that he had remained in the German Army during World War...
June 7, 1986

Daylong Strike Nearly Halts Paris Metro
PARIS - The conflict has strong political overtones. Only a few days ago, the [Jacques Chirac] Cabinet forced the resignation of Claude Quinn, a Communist, as director general of the Paris transportation system after he objected to the budget cuts. The Communist-dominated General Confederation of Workers is the largest union in the Paris system, representing 41% of the subway and bus workers. Paris uses public transport extensively - an...
June 12, 1986

U.N. Holds Meeting on S. Africa; Jackson, Belafonte Assail U.S. Conference Boycott
PARIS - The U.S. government did not show up Monday for the opening of the U.N. Conference on Sanctions Against South Africa, but black American leaders Jesse Jackson and Harry Belafonte attended and made stinging attacks on the Reagan Administration, which they accused of supporting the racist policies of South Africa. Jackson said the United States would have shown "some sense of humanity, some sense of care"...
June 17, 1986

Tambo Admits He Has Few Facts About S. African Confrontation
PARIS - [Oliver Tambo]'s allusion to massive slaughter attracted a good deal of attention in view of the South African ban on all independent reporting by [journalists] of the racial strife in that country. Reporters are prohibited from using all but the official government version of events. The government said Tuesday that 11 blacks died in confrontations during and after the strike. Asked about the reports of slaughter...
June 19, 1986

Spain's Socialists Expected to Win Easily in Vote Today, Only Question Is Whether Gonzalez Can Retain Majority in Parliament, Pollsters Say
MADRID - In one of the most decisive electoral victories in Spanish history, [Felipe Gonzalez] and his Spanish Socialist Workers Party won 48.4% of the vote in the 1982 parliamentary election, taking 202 of the 350 seats in the Congress of Deputies, the main house of the Spanish Parliament. Most polls indicate some slippage for the Socialists from those heights, and a few late soundings even raise...
June 22, 1986

Spanish Socialists Keep Control of Parliament in Victory for Gonzalez
MADRID - The Socialists' margin of victory was not as large as it was four years ago, when [Felipe Gonzalez] was swept into office with 202 of the 350 seats in a triumph many Spaniards looked on as their final rejection of the fascist [Francisco Franco] dictatorship. But even reduced, Gonzalez's new majority is ample enough to insure that he can govern with ease. Gonzalez and the...
June 23, 1986

Fawcett's Nazi-Hunter Role Raises the Devil
PARIS - Returning to Paris one recent afternoon from a trip to Vienna, where she protested against the alleged wartime activities of Austrian President Kurt Waldheim, Klarsfeld expressed confidence in [Farrah Fawcett]. Fawcett is in Paris for the filming of "The Beate Klarsfeld Story" for ABC-TV and several European television networks, including the French channel TF1. Le Figaro, a right-wing Paris daily, said: "From the beginning, it...
TELEVISION
June 25, 1986

Mitterrand Retrieves His Lost Popularity
PARIS - The results of these polls make it more and more probable that the 69-year-old [Francois Mitterrand], whose seven-year term ends in 1988, will decide to run for reelection. Only a few months ago, almost all analysts and politicians were counting Mitterrand out. The loss of Socialist control of Parliament in March accentuated the mood. The French clearly like the idea of "cohabitation" - the word they use...
June 30, 1986

50th Anniversary Civil War Still Painful to Spaniards
MADRID - There is an obvious difficulty for the Socialist government of Prime Minister Felipe Gonzalez. The dictatorship celebrated the 18th of July as a national holiday, commemorating the anniversary of the beginning of the war - the day [Francisco Franco] flew to Morocco, proclaimed his defiance of the republic and waited for German and Italian planes to ferry his troops to the mainland of Spain. For many years...
July 15, 1986

Delights of Paris: History Is Alive on Left Bank Street
PARIS - Paris has perhaps a hundred streets like Rue Saint Dominique - hardly changed under the weight of history, full of surprises and special wonders, beckoning a walker to pick his or her way through its delights. These streets are the glory of Paris. To savor the city, a resident usually adopts a few close by. Rue Saint Dominique on the Left Bank of the Seine River happens...
July 24, 1986

France Gives a Hero His Due for 1st Conquest of Europe's Highest Peak
PARIS - In 1832, when [Michel-Gabriel Paccard] was dead and [Jacques Balmat] in his 70s, Alexandre Dumas Sr., the author of "The Three Musketeers" and other extraordinarily popular French novels, appeared to destroy the reputation of Paccard forever by publishing an account of a meeting with Balmat in Chamonix. In those days, Chamonix, which is now on the Italian border, was a part of the Italian state...
August 9, 1986

'Privatization' Program Is Moving Along at a Leisurely Pace in France
PARIS - On top of this, the "privatization" program could become a controversial issue in the presidential election scheduled for 1988. It has already provoked some tense moments between [Jacques Chirac] and Socialist President Francois Mitterrand. The Chirac government obviously plans to move gingerly, putting only a handful of nationalized companies up for sale at the end of the year. That kind of sale will be a...
BUSINESS
August 24, 1986

Chirac Accused of Rewriting History to Court Jewish Voters, French Premier Soft-Pedals His Views on Iraq
PARIS - [Jacques Chirac] had been so identified for years with France's pro-Iraqi policy that nationalists in Iran, the enemy of Iraq, mock him by pronouncing his name "Shah-Iraq." Some Israelis who believed that the reactor would have enabled Iraq to produce a nuclear bomb added their contempt by calling the Osirak nuclear reactor "O-Chirac." In the original salvo two years ago, Giscard, a possible rival of...
August 26, 1986

Magazine Points Finger at Mitterrand in Ship Bombing
PARIS - Although [Pierre Lacoste], according to L'Express, believed that the navy should try to halt the Rainbow Warrior on the open seas, Defense Minister [Charles Hernu] decided to try to get rid of the Greenpeace problem by destroying the Rainbow Warrior before it left port. The French managed to do this on July 10, 1985, when French frogmen placed two bombs against the hull of the...
August 30, 1986

No Longer a Monopoly, French TV Is Uneasy Mix of Public and Private
PARIS - [Francois Mitterrand] finally broke the government monopoly at the end of last year - just a few months before his Socialist Party lost control of the National Assembly to [Jacques Chirac] and other conservatives - by awarding contracts to private companies to create two new channels, one for rock music, the other for regular programming. Many leftists suspect that the main purchaser of TF1 will be Robert Hersant, the...
September 1, 1986

France Tightens Security as Lebanon Policy Falters
PARIS - The train incident occurred in a hectic week that saw three French soldiers killed by a bomb in Lebanon and a dramatic renewal of the threat by the mysterious, pro-Iranian Islamic Jihad (Islamic Holy War) to kill the French hostages it is holding in Lebanon. The killing of the soldiers prompted the French government to call for an emergency meeting of the U.N. Security Council...
September 6, 1986

News, Games, Dating; Videotext - In France, It's the Rage
PARIS - Almost 2 million French homes and offices are now equipped with videotext computer terminals, known in France as Minitels and linked to computers through regular telephone lines. Almost 3,000 services are available to every Minitel user, who employs a keyboard to write on the screen of his or her terminal or call up information on it. "The Minitel would not be successful in France without...
September 12, 1986

12 Arrested in Paris City Hall Bombing
PARIS - Meanwhile, Socialists were infuriated by accusations from [Jacques Chirac] associates that Socialist laxity had encouraged the terrorism. Alain Peyrefitte, a former Cabinet member and editor of the conservative Paris newspaper Le Figaro, said that amnesties by the Socialists when they were in power in 1981 had created a climate that made France "a sanctuary for terrorism." Angry Socialists tried to throw the charge of laxity...
September 12, 1986

Terrorist Bomb Explodes in Crowded Cafeteria Near Paris; 42 Injured
PARIS - Charles Pasqua, minister of the interior and one of the Cabinet officers who had declared only a few months ago that the government of Premier Jacques Chirac would "terrorize the terrorists," rushed to the scene and announced that witnesses had furnished police with a description of a fleeing suspect. The terrorist group, which calls itself the Committee of Solidarity with Arab and Middle Eastern Prisoners...
September 13, 1986

Film Fest in France Has a U.S. Glow
DEAUVILLE, FRANCE - With critics describing the eight-day festival, which ends Sunday, as somewhat lackluster this year, attention has focused on the official blessing conferred by Minister of Culture Francois Leotard. No minister has ever attended before. In fact, Leotard's predecessor, Jack Lang, a Socialist, looked on the festival contemptuously as no more than a showcase for the American film industry and an agent of American cultural imperialism...
ENTERTAINMENT
September 13, 1986

France Orders Tight Security to Fight Terror
PARIS - Premier Jacques Chirac on Sunday announced a series of tough measures designed to seal off France from terrorist infiltration shortly after a bomb killed one policeman and seriously injured two others in an attack on a busy Champs Elysees restaurant in Paris. Chirac said that his government has also taken some secret anti-terrorist measures. Hinting that French secret agents would be involved, Chirac said, "I...
September 15, 1986

Bomb Kills Paris Policeman, Wounds 2
PARIS - A bomb exploded and killed one policeman and seriously injured two others in a terrorist attack on a busy Champs Elysees restaurant in Paris on Sunday, shortly before Premier Jacques Chirac announced the dispatch of French soldiers to the country's borders and a series of other anti-terrorism measures that will make it more difficult for foreign visitors to enter France. Although two different organizations have...
September 15, 1986

Another Bomb Shocks Paris; 1 Dead, 51 Hurt
PARIS - A bomb blew up a public office in police headquarters Monday, killing one person and injuring 51 others, in another blow in the devastating campaign by Middle East terrorists to hold the city of Paris hostage for the release of three imprisoned comrades. Premier Jacques Chirac, who had announced new anti-terrorism measures only the night before, rushed to the site of the police headquarters, a...
September 16, 1986

Nervous City Looks Over Its Shoulder; Bombings, False Alarms Shatter Life Style in Paris
PARIS - The center of Paris is an architectural and sociological and commercial delight, and it attracts Parisians who come by convenient public transportation from every other part of the city. Many of the places bombed by the terrorists in the last nine months are frequented by Parisians. To stay away from the city's public places, or to go and then feel worried and encumbered by bag...
September 17, 1986

5 Die, 60 Injured in Fifth Paris Bombing in 10 Days, Store Full of Parents, Children
PARIS - Two men in a passing car threw a bomb at a crowded, cut-rate clothing and textile store in Paris today, setting off an explosion that killed five people and injured more than 60. At the same time, the French government found itself embarrassed by a poster campaign designed to track down the terrorists who have plagued Paris for nine months. The bombing came a few...
September 17, 1986

5th Paris Bombing Kills 5, Hurts 60, Device Hurled Into Store; Million-Franc Reward Is Offered
PARIS - The bombings have created a special anxiety for the many Arab and Middle Eastern immigrants in Paris. Not only do they share the danger of other Parisians exposed to terrorist bombings that kill and maim at random, but these immigrants have also attracted a good deal of suspicion and resentment. Even before the news conference in Lebanon, there were some misgivings about the posters in...
September 18, 1986

Georges Abdallah: The Key to Paris Terrorism
PARIS - [Georges Ibrahim Abdallah] is neither Palestinian nor Muslim, but a Lebanese Christian who professes to have great sympathy for Syria. And while his movement, the Lebanese Revolutionary Armed Faction, has an ideological base, it appears to draw most of its strength from Abdallah's family and his home village. Abdallah is believed to have founded the Lebanese Revolutionary Armed Faction in 1979 in the village of...
September 19, 1986

Chirac Pledges Fight to Finish Against Terror
PARIS - [Jacques Chirac] took note of this, and also that he had just come from the funeral of the policeman who died last Sunday while removing a bomb from a crowded restaurant on the Champs Elysees. Delivering the eulogy at the funeral, Chirac said his government is determined to battle "this absolute evil led by the barbarians of modern times." Before his statement on television, Chirac...
September 19, 1986

But Who Is the Real Enemy? Chirac Gets Opposition Support in Terror Fight
PARIS - Two terrorist organizations have claimed responsibility for the Paris bombings and have demanded the release of Abdallah and of two other Lebanese prisoners jailed on terrorist charges. The French police believe, however, that the terrorists would be satisfied if only Abdallah were released. Many influential French now suspect that the terrorists may want far more than Abdallah-far more, in fact, than the three prisoners. According...
September 20, 1986

Years of Dealing with Terrorists Now Exploding in the Face of Paris
PARIS - The terrorists, in fact, insist that their current fury is founded on the French government's failure to keep its word after secret negotiations. If the French had not reneged, according to the terrorists, 35-year-old Georges Ibrahim Abdallah, accused of complicity in the murder of a U.S. military attache, Lt. Col. Charles Ray, and an Israeli diplomat, Yacov Barsimantov, would now be free. The terrorists claim...
OPINION
September 21, 1986

Police Find Explosives in Forest Outside Paris
PARIS - It was the second such cache found in less than a week. The police, again without making it clear whether there was any link to the Paris terrorism, announced last Wednesday that they had uncovered an even larger cache of explosives at Fontainebleau, 40 miles from Paris. French police were sticking to their theory that the wave of bombings was caused by the brothers and...
September 23, 1986

Europeans Agree to Pool Intelligence Data on Terrorists
LONDON - Although many terrorist analysts believe that the governments of Syria, Iran and Libya manipulate many of the terrorists in Europe, [Douglas Hurd] said the question was not discussed at the meeting. Nor, he said, was there any discussion of some kind of intergovernmental European police force to strike at the terrorists. He said such a force would be "confusing and might hurt rather than help."...
September 26, 1986

France Contacts Syrians, Seeking Help to Avoid More Bombings
PARIS - The doubters are most troubled by [Jacques Chirac]'s use of Msgr. Hilarion Capucci as an intermediary last week. Capucci, a Syrian who was imprisoned in 1974 by the Israelis on charges of arms smuggling when he was Greek Orthodox archbishop of Jerusalem, conferred with the French minister of security, the Syrian foreign minister and, in the most controversial contact of all, prisoner Georges Ibrahim Abdallah...
September 30, 1986

Old Touches Kept Reykjavik a Homey Setting for Conference
REYKJAVIK, ICELAND - Icelanders were surprised that President Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev suddenly settled on Reykjavik as the site of their summit conference next weekend. But no Icelander seems awed by the selection. They feel sure that Reykjavik, small as it is, can cope and that Iceland, rich as it is in both antique and modern achievement, can make itself better known throughout the world...
October 6, 1986

U.S. Jewish Leaders Will Go to Iceland
REYKJAVIK, ICELAND - The government of Iceland, stung by criticism that it is anti-Jewish, Tuesday granted permission for a handful of American Jewish leaders to fly here on the eve of the superpower conference for a few hours of quiet protest against the Kremlin's treatment of Soviet Jews. Obviously upset by this criticism and suggestions that Iceland was abandoning its own traditions of liberty, [Steingrimur Hermannsson] and other...
October 8, 1986

Whaling Dispute Sours U.S.-Iceland Relations, Erodes Support for NATO Base
REYKJAVIK, ICELAND - The trouble arose from Iceland's killing of 120 whales this year despite its agreement to abide by a moratorium on whaling by the International Whaling Commission. Iceland said it had killed the whales for scientific research - an acceptable reason under the commission's rules. Icelanders and Americans agree that the issue is more emotional than economic: Even before the ban, when Icelanders killed 400 to 500 whales...
October 9, 1986

Soviets Upbeat in Iceland, Drop 'Imperialist' Charges; Dignitaries, Cold Rain Greet Reagan on Arrival
Robert C. Toth
REYKJAVIK, ICELAND - [Reagan] made no statement when he landed at Keflavik, the international airport that is part of the American-run North Atlantic Treaty Organization base on Iceland. But he chatted with President [Vigdis Finnbogadottir], one of the world's few elected woman chiefs of state, and with Prime Minister Steingrimur Hermannsson and his Cabinet. Reagan was then driven to the U.S. ambassador's residence and embassy in the Icelandic...
October 10, 1986

From Cod Liver Oil to Hors d'Oeuvres, Iceland Seeks to Be a Good Host
REYKJAVIK, ICELAND - Iceland is also using the occasion to explain its policies and international grievances to journalists. Minister of Foreign Affairs Matthias A. Mathiessen and Minister of Fisheries Halldor Asgrimsson, for example, met a few American journalists at lunch Thursday to explain some of Iceland's recent problems with the United States. A good deal of discussion centered on a dispute over Iceland's killing of 120 whales this ...
October 10, 1986

Reporter's Notebook, Icelanders Hopes Talks Will Melt Image as Igloo-Dwellers
REYKJAVIK, ICELAND - Steingrimur Hermannsson, the prime minister, believes Iceland will surely benefit in worldwide attention and understanding for hosting the summit between President Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev. Everyone knows that someone made a mistake in scheduling Gorbachev's arrival in Iceland at the same time that the Icelandic government was opening its parliamentary session. But whose mistake was it? Said a Moscow official: "If the...
October 11, 1986

Gorbachev 'Murders Me,' Protester Says
REYKJAVIK, ICELAND - Although some Jews held up pictures of Soviet Jews at a news briefing by Soviet officials, there were no loud protest demonstrations in the city. Reykjavik was notable for the absence of the mass protest parades and rallies - on every cause from gay rights to Soviet Jewry - that enlivened Geneva and tied up the Swiss police during the first [Reagan]-[Mikhail S. Gorbachev] summit last November. Although [Shirman]...
October 11, 1986

The Reykjavik Summit: Reporter's Notebook, Early Bird Gets the Door in Reagan-Gorbachev Gaffe
REYKJAVIK, ICELAND - In their first encounter since Geneva 11 months ago, President [Reagan] and Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev entangled themselves Saturday in a slight problem of timing. Gorbachev's black Zil limousine arrived a minute or two earlier than scheduled at the turn-of-the-century mansion that is serving as the site of the meetings. Gorbachev, wearing a coat but clutching his hat in his hand, rushed to the...
October 12, 1986

The Reykjavik Summit: As Talks Adjourn, Mood Turns Cool as Icelandic Night
REYKJAVIK, ICELAND - Then [George P. Shultz] began talking about reaching not sweeping agreements but "sweeping potential agreements" and praised "the agreement that might have been." And it soon became clear that the conference had been a disaster - a failure of such magnitude that [Ronald Reagan] and [Mikhail S. Gorbachev] could not even agree to hold the Washington summit that had been pledged for later this year. The Soviet...
October 13, 1986

The Reykjavik Summit: Reporter's Notebook, Gorbachev Takes a Novel Approach
REYKJAVIK, ICELAND - The rules of the Soviet Communist Party require that all members be atheists, and Raisa Gorbachev, the wife of the Soviet leader, is no exception. But she sat in a little Icelandic church Sunday. Before entering the small, 140-year-old wooden Lutheran chapel in Burfell 50 miles from Reykjavik, she stood on the steps and wrapped her silver fox jacket around a 5-year-old Icelandic girl shivering...
October 13, 1986

Nigerian Soyinka Awarded Nobel Prize for Literature
PARIS - Announcing the award in Stockholm, the Swedish Academy cited [Wole Soyinka] as a writer "who in a wide cultural perspective and with poetic overtones fashions the drama of existence." The academy said that Soyinka "possesses a prolific store of words and expressions which he exploits to the full in witty dialogue, in satire and grotesquery, in quiet poetry and essays of sparkling vitality." The first...
October 17, 1986

Richelieu Stressed Diligence to Keep Language Pure, French Academy Produces 1st Dictionary Since 1935
PARIS - The academy's members include such well-known writers as Henri Troyat, Marguerite Yourcenar, Julien Green, Eugene Ionesco, Claude Levi-Strauss and Leopold Senghor. Some of the best-known names in French literary history were members, including La Fontaine, Voltaire, Pierre Corneille, Jean Racine, Victor Hugo, Edmond Rostand and Paul Valery. Other well-known writers, among them Gustave Flaubert, Emile Zola and Marcel Proust, were never admitted. Druon said that...
October 20, 1986

France Takes 24-Hour Strike by Public Workers in Stride
PARIS - The unions called out more than 5 million public workers, from air controllers to school cooks, in the strike, aimed at protesting the government's plans to reduce its public work force and freeze many public salaries. It was the first such strike called by all the major unions since [Jacques Chirac] and his conservative coalition won the French parliamentary elections last March 16. While the...
October 22, 1986

'Emperor' Bokassa Ends Exile, Is Arrested in His Homeland
PARIS - Bokassa ruled the Central African Republic for 13 years before he was ousted in 1979 in a military coup encouraged by the French government and supported by French paratroopers. By then, Bokassa, who proclaimed himself emperor in a lavish ceremony that featured a crown supposedly worth $5 million and reportedly ordered the massacre of 100 schoolchildren for refusing to buy uniforms from one of his...
October 24, 1986

France Also Suspects Syria of Terror - but Keeps Quiet
PARIS - The British rupture of relations with Syria has embarrassed and exposed a French government that has said and done nothing in public to Syria despite the widespread conviction here that Syrian agents had a hand in the wave of bombings that terrified Paris during September. Syria has close relations with the Iranian government, which is believed to influence and support the Lebanese Shias. Syrian pressure...
October 26, 1986

Statue Needs a Home The Dreyfus Affair - It Never Dies
PARIS - By then, the true guilt or innocence of Dreyfus did not matter to them anyway. In their view, to agitate for Dreyfus, even an innocent Dreyfus, amounted to an attack on the honor of the army and of France itself. Dreyfus, who spent four years and three months in detention and returned from Devil's Island an aged, white-haired, bony man, never seemed to waver from...
October 30, 1986

M'Bow a Question Mark for UNESCO In Its 40th Year, Group Could Be Nearing an Irreparable Rift
PARIS - In the view of some UNESCO watchers and employees, these words left open the possibility that he would accept a draft for reelection, and a guessing game has been going on in UNESCO corridors in the last few weeks about whether he really will leave. The game, in a sense, reflects his power, for many analysts are convinced that [M'Bow], despite all the accusations of...
November 5, 1986

World War II Infamy - Vichy: Town Tries to Shed Its Dark Past
VICHY, FRANCE - "No one ever calls the government of those days the Petain government or even the government in Vichy," said Mayor Jacques Lacarin in his offices in the city hall recently. "They simply call it Vichy. We spend millions of dollars to advertise the city as a wonderful place to come and stay, and people have this wrong impression of it from history. And do you...
November 6, 1986

French Pleased by U.S. Dispute Over Hostages
Tyler Marshall
PARIS - "I do not know the details of the method used by the Americans to obtain liberation of the hostage," said [Jean-Bernard Raimond], who has been forced to deny for days that France was negotiating with Syria to prevent a new outbreak of terrorism in Paris and with Iran to obtain release of six French hostages in Lebanon. In Paris, Raimond repeated his government's denial of...
November 8, 1986

Two French Hostages in Lebanon Reportedly Freed
PARIS - Freedom for the two hostages on Armistice Day, one of France's most solemn holidays, would probably be cited by Premier Jacques Chirac as a vindication of his controversial policy of repairing relations with both Iran and Syria. This policy has aroused a good deal of scorn by critics because of the widespread belief in France that Syria had a hand in the wave of bombings...
November 11, 1986

Snubbed by French Leaders, Botha Visits Cemetery to Honor S. Africa's War Dead
PARIS - Ironically, when [Pieter W. Botha] came to France two years ago to lay a foundation stone for the cemetery museum in honor of the war dead, Premier Jacques Chirac, then the main opposition leader to the Socialist government, protested that the Socialists sent only the secretary of veteran affairs to welcome Botha. At Longueval, the ceremony was interrupted twice. First, an anti-apartheid demonstrator shouted "If...
November 12, 1986

Mood of Paris: 'We Are in Hell of a Mess', Chirac's Terrorism Policy Divides Government and Confuses Citizens
PARIS - To guarantee that the Syrian government will hold the clan to the truce, said Le Monde and other newspapers, France was ready to sell arms to Syria. The [Jacques Chirac] government denied the report about arms sales but stressed time and again for several weeks that France exonerated Syria of all blame in the Paris bombings. When [De Borchgrave] published a transcript of the interview...
November 12, 1986

2 Ex-Hostages in Paris; France Thanks Syrians, Chirac Pledges Renewed Effort to Gain Release of 5 Still Held by Muslim Extremists in Lebanon
PARIS - Two Frenchmen freed by Shia Muslim kidnapers after months of captivity in Lebanon were welcomed home Tuesday by Premier Jacques Chirac as his government thanked Syria for helping arrange the release. The praise for Syria was echoed by one of the hostages. Coudari told a radio reporter, "I can tell you that the collaboration that now exists between the government of Chirac and Syria is...
November 12, 1986

Reagan Stand on Iran Called Boost for Chirac
PARIS - [Reagan] did so, according to the French view, with his speech justifying American arms shipments and negotiations with Iran. To many French ears, in fact, the speech Thursday night sounded like an English echo of the many statements made by [Jacques Chirac] and French officials for more than a week justifying their policy toward Syria. Both French President Francois Mitterrand and Premier Chirac are attending...
November 16, 1986

Renault Chief Slain in Paris, Leftist Terrorist Group Suspected by Police
PARIS - Renault owns 46% of American Motors Corp., and in Detroit, AMC President Joseph E. Cappy said: "Everyone at American Motors is shocked and deeply saddened by the death of [Georges Besse]. . . . Mr. Besse was a strong supporter of American Motors, and his counsel will be deeply missed." Besse was the fifth president of Renault since the government expropriated it in 1945 and...
November 18, 1986

Leftist Group Says It Killed Renault Chief
PARIS - The killing, according to the leaflet, was carried out by the Commando Pierre Overney, a unit named for a militant Maoist who was killed in a clash outside the Renault auto manufacturing plant in 1972 by a Renault guard. The guard himself was later murdered in revenge. After listening carefully overnight to reports from witnesses to the [Georges Besse] murder, the police also said they...
November 19, 1986

All Aboard For Opening of Paris Art Museum
PARIS - Fifteen years after its escape from demolition, the transformed Gare d'Orsay railroad station was inaugurated Monday by President Francois Mitterrand as the new Musee d'Orsay, a lavish and enormous museum dedicated to the 19th Century and displaying, among many other works, the largest collection of Impressionist art in France. President Mitterrand, flanked by former President Valery Giscard d'Estaing and Premier Jacques Chirac, flicked aside a...
ART
December 2, 1986

Weinberger 'Horrified' by Iran-Contras Deal
PARIS - [Caspar W. Weinberger], who spoke with Washington correspondents accompanying him and with American correspondents based in Paris, praised [Frank C. Carlucci] - a former associate of Weinberger at the Department of Defense. Weinberger depicted Carlucci as an executive who would run the security staff so that it would be "concerned with sorting out and presenting to the President differing views and giving the President expert staff advice...
December 3, 1986

Police in Paris Battle 200,000 Angry Students
PARIS - Faced with a flurry of student strikes and demonstrations over the bill in recent weeks, [Jacques Chirac] has promised to amend it to clear up what he calls "misunderstandings." [Rene Monory] repeated this to the student leaders, promising to make important modifications in the bill. But the students insisted that they wanted the bill withdrawn. Monory, accompanied by Minister of Higher Education Alain Devaquet, who...
December 5, 1986

French University System-Mess Defies Easy Solution
PARIS - It would allow universities to set entrance requirements both for the university and for certain faculties. To some extent, this happens anyway. Some universities accept students with the baccalaureate in the order in which they apply. But others, like the University of Paris at the Sorbonne, for example, have rigid entrance requirements. The students know this but insist that the elitist trend should be turned...
December 6, 1986

French Government Tries to Appease Critics by Delaying Action on University Bill
PARIS - Before resubmitting these proposals, which he said had been misunderstood by public opinion, [Rene Monory] said he would consult with all concerned, including the students and their leaders. Monory would not say when these proposals would go before the Parliament again but promised that students would find no basic changes in the university system at the start of the 1987-88 academic year. There was some...
December 6, 1986

Student Protester Dies in Paris; Tension High
PARIS - Paul Bauzelon, a young civil servant at the Ministry of Finance, said he was returning from a movie and opening the door of his apartment building when Oussekine tried to rush into the hallway to escape the police. But the police followed him in, clubbing and kicking him and beating Bauzelon as well. Oussekine, a French citizen born in Algeria, was left unconscious. An ambulance...
December 7, 1986

Chirac Asks 'Calm, Reason' in University Reform Crisis
PARIS - At the same time, [Jacques Chirac], after a night of violence and looting and burning, stubbornly refused to withdraw the university bill that set off the protests by the students. Despite appeals from some members of his conservative coalition, Chirac was heeding the plea of his most right-wing supporters not to give in to what they called "the pressure of the streets." Student leaders insisted...
December 8, 1986

Chirac Withdraws Bill on University Reforms
PARIS - Premier Jacques Chirac, under intense political pressure in a worsening crisis, capitulated Monday to protesting students and withdrew the university reform bill that had set off three weeks of strikes, demonstrations and riots. The withdrawal of the university bill was welcomed by President Francois Mitterrand. Presidential aides told reporters that Mitterrand, a Socialist, had urged Chirac, a conservative, to withdraw the bill as long ago...
December 9, 1986

Extraordinaire! France Has a Taste for U.S. Cuisine
PARIS - The French gurus of gastronomic taste still do not rate American cuisine highly. The Gault-Millau guide, for example, finds the atmosphere at Joe Allen, one of the oldest of the American restaurants in Paris, "superb" and very nouillorquaise (the French way of writing "New Yorkese"). But the most that the guide book can say about the cooking is "not terrible-terrible." A younger French clientele crowds...
December 10, 1986

Chirac Defers Action on Other Bills in Wake of Riots
PARIS - Premier Jacques Chirac, chastened by a political defeat at the hands of French students, slowed the pace of all his remaining legislation Tuesday, saying that "a pause is necessary in government action." A day after withdrawing the university reform bill that had sent students into the streets in massive protests, Chirac assembled the conservative and center-right deputies of his parliamentary coalition and informed them that...
December 10, 1986

Students March in Paris to Mourn Colleague; Call for General Strike Fails
PARIS - The death of Oussekine, a 22-year-old student, after a post-midnight beating by police last week embittered the students, radicalized their movement and shook the [Jacques Chirac] government. After two more days of stubborn insistence that the country needed some university reform, if only a little, Chirac finally capitulated to the students. Most political analysts were convinced that the student victory had been turned into a...
December 11, 1986

Analysis: French Police Tactics Criticized, Cruel Spirit Seen in Force Used at Student Protests
PARIS - [Jacques Chirac]'s government came to power last March 16 on a platform that catered to rightist demands for more police protection against crime and for more restrictions against illegal immigrants and against the ease with which children of immigrants could obtain citizenship. Many French resented the North African Arab immigrants, and many blamed them for most of the petty crime in the cities. In the...
December 13, 1986

French Rail Strike Grows; Chirac, Unions Stand Firm
PARIS - A subway and suburban rail strike in Paris and a maritime workers' strike in the ports added to the labor tension during the holidays. But neither of these has spawned the same kind of discomfort and anger as the railroad strike. Practically all trains from Paris to the north and east have been canceled. In other directions, only about one out of four scheduled trains...
December 24, 1986

Frenchman Released in Lebanon, Muslim Kidnapers Praise Chirac for Altering Policies
PARIS - Extremist Muslim kidnapers, praising Premier Jacques Chirac for altering French policy in the Middle East, released French hostage Aurel Cornea in Beirut on Wednesday, calling their act "a Christmas good-will gesture." Gunmen in a black Mercedes-Benz let Cornea off on a street near the seafront in Muslim West Beirut at 6 p.m., a couple of hundred yards from the Beau Rivage Hotel where French diplomats...
December 25, 1986

Paris Welcomes Hostage Liberated in Lebanon
PARIS - [Jacques Chirac]'s catalogue of gratitude conspicuously omitted the government of Iran, even though most analysts in Paris believe that France's attempts to placate and repair relations with Iran during 1986 largely accounted for the release of Cornea and four other hostages in the last six months. [Aurel Cornea], who showed up fully bearded at the Beau Rivage Hotel in Muslim West Beirut after his captors...
December 26, 1986

Analysis: Old Doubts Resurface in France About Chirac, Premier's Policies Seen as Weak in Wake of Student Protests, Transport Strike
PARIS - Until this month, the answer seemed obvious. [Jacques Chirac] was riding high. It had become more and more evident that, under the strange double executive system of France, that he, not President Francois Mitterrand, was running the country. Chirac projected a dynamic image, a leader who, whether you agreed with him or not, got things done. The polls showed that he had a reasonable chance...
December 27, 1986

Torn by Language In Belgium, 'There Are No Belgians'
FOURON-LE-COMTE or GRAVENVOEREN, BELGIUM - Until recently, the French Walloons dominated Belgium. The Walloons came from one of the most industrialized regions of Europe, and it was widely assumed both inside and outside Belgium that the French language would eventually prevail. No deputy ever spoke Dutch in the Belgian Parliament until 1889. Rich Flemish families learned French, and it was unthinkable to live in Brussels or work in the national...
December 29, 1986

Short-Lived French Coin Is a Dealer's Delight
PARIS - With a good deal of fanfare, the French government released the new 10-franc coin (worth a little more than $1.50) on Oct. 22. The public looked at it, weighed it and began confusing it so quickly with the half-franc coin (worth only 8 cents) that a crescendo of fury and ridicule fell on both the government and the coin. So the Ministry of Finance asked...
December 31, 1986

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