by Philip Short
43. Curiously the French public approved of the President’s stance. An opinion poll found that 58 per cent, including 40 per cent of right-wing voters, expressed confidence in his handling of the situation. In other polls taken the same week, fewer than half of those questioned said he should have taken a tougher line. Six weeks later, Gorbachev’s book, The August Coup: The Truth and the Lessons, revealed the Soviet leader’s irritation at Mitterrand’s lack of support. ‘From Foros [the Crimean resort where his villa was situated], I had a conversation with President Bush,’ Gorbachev wrote. ‘François Mitterrand should have called me. He did not and I still regret that today.’ It was later claimed that this passage – which appeared only in the French, Italian and Finnish language editions of the book – was a translation error. In fact, according to his press secretary, Andrei Grachev, Gorbachev indeed felt that Mitterrand had ‘abandoned him too quickly’. The offending line was changed in the English-language edition to avoid making too big an issue of it. At the end of October, the Gorbachevs stayed with the Mitterrands at Latche, at which point both Presidents denied that there had been any change in their relations.
44. Britain, France, West Germany and the United States held summit meetings in London and in Guadeloupe in 1977 and 1979, but the last meeting of the ‘Big Four’ nuclear powers had taken place in Paris in 1960. It was attended by De Gaulle, Eisenhower, Khrushchev and Macmillan.
45. Meeting with John Major, January 14 1991, cited in Attali, Verbatim, Vol. 3, pp. 691–3.
46. Meeting with President Bush, April 19 1990, Key Largo, ibid., pp. 468–70, and transcript of lunch discussion the same day in CHAN 5AG4 CD74, dossier 1.
47. Meeting with President Bush, March 14 1991, Martinique, in CHAN 5AG4 CD75, dossier 1.
48. Meeting with Helmut Kohl, Bad Wiessee, July 23 1991, in Favier and Martin-Roland, La décennie Mitterrand, Vol. 4, pp. 201–2.
49. Letter from Bush to Mitterrand, October 23 1991, ibid., p. 207.
50. Meeting with John Major, London, December 2 1991, ibid., pp. 223–4. The opt-out allowed Britain to seek parliamentary approval before adopting the principle of the single currency, which meant that in practice it could delay a decision as long as it wished.
51. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, November 29 1991.
52. Favier and Martin-Roland, La décennie Mitterrand, Vol. 4, p. 301 and New York Times, June 29 1992.
53. This was Mitterrand’s argument to Kohl when they met in Berlin on December 3 1992: ‘we must reason as if the Serbs and Croats have won. The solution is to seek a consensus of the three communities.’
54. Some of the arguments advanced by the French military to avoid committing troops, or even enforcing a ‘no fly’ zone, were risible. The Serbs, the French General Staff warned, might try to provoke Western aircraft into ‘shooting down civilian airliners or planes transporting the wounded’, and there would be an increased risk of Serb terrorist attacks in France. Why there had not been an increase in terrorist attacks during the Gulf War – which had been waged against a country much more experienced in matters of terrorism than Serbia – was not addressed.
55. Mitterrand’s conversation with Bush at Munich on July 5 1992 (transcript in CHAN 5AG4 CD75) was revealing in this regard. It was the last such argument between the two men. By the time Clinton took office in January 1993, European defence was no longer an issue:
MITTERRAND: Any organisation developing in parallel to NATO seems suspect [to you]. You have the same reaction to the Eurocorps . . . It’s a force which has political value vis-a-vis Germany, which has been for so long our enemy . . . It’s a matter of Franco-German reconciliation . . . It will be very difficult to take it further. Other countries aren’t ready yet. [In any case], I don’t expect American troops to leave for a very long time. I’ll be dead before that happens . . .
BUSH [unconvinced]: I’d understand better if you thought we were about to withdraw. What’s this Eurocorps going to do? . . . It’s reviving [isolationist] feelings in the USA. How many differences can we stand? CSCE, COCOM [and now] the Eurocorps!
MITTERRAND: I don’t feel obliged to say yes to everything you decide without having been consulted . . . I don’t want to discover what’s happening by reading the newspapers. It’s true that you [Bush] are good enough to write to me just beforehand, [but unlike Reagan] you are a special case . . . If the Eurocorps serves no purpose, why is it a problem for you? . . . France is part of NATO but not of the integrated command. We want to maintain that distance. That’s why the Eurocorps cannot be part of the integrated command. But this is all theory. [In practice] the Corps cannot act outside NATO. You are treating as antagonistic things which are in fact complementary . . . This Corps is the embryo of what in 25 years’ time will be a means for Europe to ensure its own security. [But] I’ve gone as far as I can. I won’t take any further steps.
JAMES BAKER: The problem is if one day this embryo is going to duplicate NATO . . .
ROLAND DUMAS: For the last 12 months, NATO has been unwilling to concern itself with Yugoslavia. The Europeans can have their own problems. In certain areas, they [should] be able to act off their own bat.
MITTERRAND: The creation and development of the Eurocorps is worrying American diplomacy. Why?
BUSH: Our problem is that the message received in the United States is that NATO’s defensive mission is no longer necessary . . .
MITTERRAND: So what are we supposed to do? Let the American government take all the decisions?
56. The Eurocorps became operational in 1995 with a permanent staff of 1,000 officers and men, based in Strasbourg. Belgium, Luxembourg and Spain are permanent members, as well as France and Germany. Other countries have also contributed. The Corps has taken part in peacekeeping operations in Bosnia and Kosovo and with the NATO-led security force in Afghanistan.
57. Paris Match, in its issue of September 24 1992, quoted Gubler as saying that the cancer was ‘in its initial stages’ and had not metastasised into the bone. In fact metastasis, as he well knew, had already been well advanced ten years earlier. Professor Bernard Debré, the Chief of the Urology Department at Cochin Hospital, where the operation took place (and the son of Mitterrand’s nemesis, Prime Minister Michel Debré), estimated that the President had ‘from five to 15 years’ before him.
58. That may seem unduly harsh, but after more than forty years spent working for a variety of broadcasting organisations, newspapers and magazines, it is a judgement I am ready to defend. Journalism is a difficult business, but editors’ insistence on matching every story that their competitors manage to obtain leads to a suspension of critical faculties. In France, during the campaign against Bérégovoy – which had been launched for political purposes by Judge Jean-Pierre and his associates – no serious writer, whether on the Left or the Right, stood up to ask whether there was any substance to the accusations. The limitations of the medium make such false unanimity hard to avoid, notwithstanding the integrity of the journalists concerned. As for those who do not care whether what they write is true – and they are legion – their role is indissociable from Western democratic practice in which the right to disseminate false views is a necessary part of freedom of speech. It is part of the job description of politicians that they be able to withstand campaigns of calumny. For men like Bérégovoy and Salengro, that proved not to be the case.
15: The Survivalist
1. While it was certainly not Mitterrand’s intention to support the Hutu extremists, France’s consistent opposition to the Tutsi-led RPF meant that objectively it was on the side of the Hutus, whether under Habyarimana or the Akazu leadership which took his place.
2. That Mitterrand knew this to be untrue was confirmed six weeks later when he spoke of the risk of a second genocide. By late May a wealth of information was available about the massacres, including a report from the French Health Minister, Philippe Douste-Blazy, who had returned a few days earlier from a visit to Rwandan refugee camps in Zaire during which he had es
timated the number of dead at 500,000.
3. Quesnot first used the term ‘Tutsiland’ in a note on April 29, in which he charged that Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni was aiming to create a Tutsi state in Rwanda.
4. In April 2013, investigating magistrates from the Paris High Court ordered a former Rwandan army captain, Pascal Simbikangwa, who had allegedly been a member of the Akazu, to be sent for trial on charges of ‘complicity in genocide’ and ‘complicity in crimes against humanity’ relating to massacres carried out between April and July 1994. Unless the magistrates’ decision is overturned on appeal, it will be the first such trial held in France – almost twenty years after the event.
5. Message to President Bush, January 3 1994, cited in Favier and Martin-Roland, La décennie Mitterrand, Vol. 4, p. 497.
6. Meeting with Warren Christopher, May 4 1993, in CHAN 5AG4 CD75.
7. Hubert Védrine, Note to Mitterrand, January 25 1994, cited in Favier and Martin-Roland, Vol. 4, p. 512.
8. Meeting with Warren Christopher, January 24 1994, in CHAN 5AG4 CD75.
9. Pierre Tourlier situated this episode later and wrote that he intervened at the request of Gubler’s successor, Dr Jean-Pierre Tarot. According to Gubler, Mitterrand’s use of alternative medicines began in the autumn of 1994.
16: The Testament
1. After Mitterrand’s death, Benamou published two further books, Le dernier Mitterrand, recounting the last two and a half years of his life, and ‘Jeune homme, vous ne savez pas de quoi vous parlez’. The latter – a systematically hostile account – employed the same amalgam of innuendo and half-truth as the references to Mitterrand in Wiesel’s autobiography.
2. Mitterrand, François, De l’Allemagne, de la France, Odile Jacob, 1996, pp. 241–7.
3. Cited in Sylvie Thiéblemont-Dollet, ‘François Mitterrand: une mise en scène télévisuelle ou la reconstruction d’une image déconstruite’, in Discours audiovisuels et mutations culturelles: actes du colloque organisé par l’AFECCAV, Bordeaux, 28, 29, 30 septembre 2000, L’Harmattan, 2002, p. 341.
4. Favier and Martin-Roland, La décennie Mitterrand, Vol. 4, p. 624.
5. Mitterrand, De l’Allemagne, de la France, pp. 42 & 143.
6. According to Christophe Barbier, Mitterrand told the Mayor of Jarnac, Maurice Voiron, in March 1995, well before the purchase of the plot at Mount Beuvray, that it was his intention to be buried in the family crypt.
7. In a conversation with Georges-Marc Benamou at the end of August, Mitterrand referred to the fate of Louis XI, whose tomb at Cléry-St-André, near Orleans, was repeatedly profaned.
8. Notably that of Benamou, in Le dernier Mitterrand. Christophe Barbier collated the accounts of almost all those present. The two most credible witnesses were his son, Gilbert, who said, ‘He tasted everything, which was already extraordinary’, and Jack Lang, who remembered that he ate modestly. Benamou had been brought by Pierre Bergé with Danielle’s agreement but without the knowledge of Mitterrand, who had been displeased to learn of his presence.
9. In a book entitled Le dernier tabou: Révélations sur la santé des présidents (Pygmalion, 2012), two journalists, Denis Demonpion and Laurent Léger, claimed – without citing their source – that, ‘at his express request’, Mitterrand was given a lethal injection during the night of January 7–8. That assertion is questionable. It is very unlikely that Mitterrand, at that stage, was in any state to make such a request. For the same reason, one may legitimately wonder whether Mitterrand authorised Tarot to administer the last rites that night or whether he had already expressed his wishes earlier. But the doctor was well aware that Mitterrand wished to die with dignity. The only person who knows for certain what happened is Tarot himself. For the last six hours of Mitterrand’s life, he was alone in the apartment with him. It is worth remembering, however, that once a cancer metastasises to the brain, death often follows very rapidly. It is possible, therefore, that Mitterrand died a natural death. Ambiguity, the constant companion of his life, was with him to the end.
10. Jacques Chirac, ‘Intervention télévisée’, January 8 1996, in http://www.jacqueschirac-asso.fr/fr/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/D%C3%A9c%C3%A8s-de-Fran%C3%A 7ois-Mitterrand.pdf
Index
The page references in this index correspond to the printed edition from which this ebook was created. To find a specific word or phrase from the index, please use the search feature of your ebook reader.
1789 Revolution, 131, 140, 165, 220, 493, 561, 563, 581
bicentenary, 470–1
and Socialists, 311–12, 315, 373, 384, 395, 423
and educational system, 386
Abbas, Ferhat, 174n, 273
Abdallah, Georges Ibrahim, 413–15, 415n, 418, 421, 448–9, 584–5
Abu Abbas, 417
Abu Daoud, 417, 462, 653n26
Abu Iyad, 448
Abu Nidal, 353
struggle against PLO, 342, 346–7, 640n27
negotiations with France, 413–14, 414n, 415–8,
Acheson, Dean, 145
Achille Lauro, 417
Action Directe, 346n, 462, 462n
Action Française, 19, 26–31, 223, 599n18, 605n19
Adenauer, Konrad, 158, 328, 380, 383
Adler, Laure, 503–4
Afanassevsky, Nicolai, 328
Afghanistan, 307, 310, 323, 397–8, 547, 656n33, 659n56
Africa, 183, 306, 397, 497, 512, 539–42, 586
Maghreb, 159, 164–5, 169, 175n
and Mitterrand, 27–8, 149–53, 155, 157, 171, 175, 180, 200, 209
decolonisation, 150, 183, 199–200
speech at La Baule, 490–4, 537–8, 655n27
rivalry between Britain and France, 538–9, 543–4, 655n25
Agacinski, Sylviane, 550
El Alamein, 96
Algeria, 1, 7, 12, 149n, 170, 172, 203, 207, 220–1, 275, 446–7, 493, 585–6, 619n27, 622n5, 627n7
and Dayan, 29, 147
and Le Pen, 424
and Mitterrand, 2–5, 150, 172–4, 174n, 175–8, 183–6, 188–90, 192, 199, 203–4, 206–7, 211, 217, 250, 262, 556, 621–3nn 2–5, 7, 13 & 17
and Mollet, 180–7, 263
and Tixier-Vignancour, 207
and May 13 1958 insurrection, 191–2,
and de Gaulle, 10, 191, 193, 198, 200, 204–5, 214–18, 222–3, 370–1, 597n4
and torture, 177–8, 183–5, 188, 203, 216, 250, 262, 424, 623nn18–19
and FARL and CSPPA, 413–15, 448
Allen, Richard, 335, 364
Allende, Salvador, 315, 523
Aoun, General Michel, 656n35
Al-Qaeda, 449n, 656n33
Althusser, Louis, 250
Al Watan al arabi, 345, 640n24, 649n49
AMGOT, 118
Andreotti, Giulio, 517
Andropov, Yuri, 326, 331, 396
Angola, 307, 574n
Angoulême, 15, 21, 26–7,
Antelme, Marie–Louise, 103
Antelme, Robert, 101, 103, 113, 117, 126–7, 130
‘anti-terrorist cell’ (at Elysée), 353, 355, 357–8
arafat, Yasser, 342–3, 418, 501, 641n34
and Mitterrand, 339–40, 347, 352, 400, 494–5, 569, 579, 641n35
Aragon, Louis, 211
Arbellot de Vacqueur, Simon, 72, 604n17
d’Arcy, Jean, 148
d’Argenlieu, Admiral Thierry, 619n21
Argentina, 378, 382, 497
Argov, Shlomo, 342
Armée Secrète, 80–1, 94n, 586
Armenia, 471, 583, 656n40
Armstrong, Robert, 410
Arrighi, Pascal, 194–5, 218
Asahi Shimbun, 436
ASALA (Secret Army for the Liberation of Armenia), 345, 349, 421, 448, 583, 640–1nn25 & 31
al-Assad, Hafez, 345, 351–2, 400, 414, 419–21, 641n35, 649–50nn50 & 53, 656n35
al-Assad, Rifaat, 347
d’Astier de la Vigerie, Emmanuel, 72, 81, 87, 92, 94, 97, 608n42, 616n24
Atlantic
Alliance, see NATO
Attali, Jacques, 313, 325, 479, 519, 552, 653n23
and economic policy, 368, 370, 642n42
and Mitterrand, 288, 320, 362, 391, 409, 454, 456, 479, 490, 494, 519, 555, 561, 592, 638n13, 648n43
and cohabitation, 432, 434, 444,
and Rocard, 465, 503
and Cresson, 505–6
and Thatcher, 378, 381, 644nn1 & 4
and Gorbachev, 474, 646nn26–7,
Audran, General René, 462, 462n
Auque, Roger, 449, 452
Auriol, Vincent, 138, 146, 148–9, 152–3, 163, 317, 618–19nn12 & 26
L’Aurore, 166, 627–8n10
Auschwitz, 74–5, 554–5, 602n8, 605n20
Australia, 655n21
Austria, 272, 361
Anschluss, 37, 441
and Middle East, 414n, 639–40n23
border with Hungary, 472–3, 654n8
and Europe, 475, 518n
Austro-Hungarian Empire, 510, 520
Avinin, Antoine, 99
Avril, Pierre, ix
Azerbaijan, 471
Badinter, Elizabeth, 288, 355, 457
Badinter, Robert, x, 189, 288, 355, 457, 554, 556, 642n44
and terrorism, 415–17, 420
de Baecque, Francis, 624n26
Baker, James A., 481–2, 498, 521, 654n18, 658–9n55
Baker, Josephine, 96, 606n27
Bakhtiar, Shapour, 348, 412–13, 419, 584
Balenci, Jean, x, 210, 213, 236, 241, 244, 287, 353–4, 354n, 595
Balkans, see Yugoslavia
Balladur, Édouard, 392, 430, 434, 536, 541–2, 560, 562, 643–4n53
and Mitterrand, 533–4, 537, 569
Baltique, 564–5, 579
Balzac, Honoré de, 25, 32, 53
Banisadr, Abulhassan, 348
Baranès, André, 165, 167, 620n33, 621n41, 627n9
Barbarigo, Ida, 565
Barbie, Klaus, 556–7
Barenboim, Daniel, 315–6
Baron, Maya, 603 n21
Barrachin, Edmond, 134, 616–17nn26–9
Barre, Raymond, x, 295, 340, 391, 467, 507, 533, 636n24,