1 JANUARY 1983, Page 9

The conscience of M. Cot

Sam White

Paris president Mitterrand is becoming wor- ried about his image. He indicated as much to a group of political correspondents whom he received at the Elysee recently. He chided them on that occasion for presenting the resignation of Jean-Pierre Cot from the government as the result of a split between `idealists' and realists' within the higher ranks of the French Socialist Party. He resented this interpretation because it sug- gested that he himself had veered away from the high moral principles which guid- ed Socialist policy in general and its foreign policy in particular.

It was a laudable demonstration of sen- sitivity but hardly a convincing one — that the President had not in fact turned his back on policies (on Africa, for example) 'I'm Ivan the Enfant Terrible.' which he had vigorously proclaimed while in opposition. M. Cot, it will be recalled, was Minister for Co-operation, a post which involves dealing with the whole of Africa and especially with France's former African colonies. As such he tried to reform what he and the Socialist Party had always regarded as the 'neo-colonialist' policies of previous French governments in these regions by doing away with some of the worst abuses. These consisted in France giv- ing aid and military comfort to some of the most corrupt and bloodthirsty regimes on the African continent.

It should be added at this point that one of the principal objections of the Socialists to their predecessors' African policies was the methods used to implement them. This involved making Africa, along with foreign affairs and defence, the 'reserved domains' of the President of the Republic who had his own African office in the Elysee. Its ac- tivities were wrapped in secrecy and the Minister allegedly responsible was merely a sort of camouflage to distract attention from itself.

One can imagine, therefore, M. Cot's mounting exasperation to find that neither the African policy nor the methods used to implement it were showing the slightest sign of change from the system introduced by General de Gaulle and rigidly followed by all his successors. Just about the only dif- ference one could detect was one of per- sonal style. There was no danger, for exam- ple, that Mitterrand would strike up per- sonal relationships with some of the more unsavoury African rulers or accept gifts or safari holidays from the likes of a Bokassa, as Giscard did in his day. In that sense Mit- terrand's relations with Africa resembled more those of de Gaulle than of Giscard, avoiding both undue concern for human rights in that part of the world and undue familiarity with those who too blatantly disregarded them. The excuse then as now is also the same: too much interference in such matters would destabilise many African regimes, creating chaos in its wake from which only the Russians or the Americans could profit. Matters were to go a little further than that, however, and it was at that point that M. Cot's cup of bit- terness and frustration began to overflow.

Recently, for example, Sekou Toure, the appalling tyrant of Guinea, was brought back into the fold of French-speaking African nations, and his return was flaunted by a state visit to Paris. The timing could not have been worse — he arrived here fresh from a butchery of a dozen of his political opponents. Then, on the heels of that visit, the government began to consider putting in a bid for the construction of a third atomic reactor for South Africa two of them had already been provided by France before Giscard imposed an em- bargo. The Cabinet emerged divided from these deliberations, but the mere fact that it even considered the project proved almost too much for the unfortunate Cot. By that time it was decided to spare him further af- fronts to his conscience by shunting him off to be French ambassador to Madrid. He took the hint and resigned instead.

The harsh facts of life are of course against Cot and strongly on the the side of the President. France's growing foreign in- debtedness, as well as its increasing balance of payments deficit, simply do not permit it to be too finicky about such deals. But they do stand out in striking contrast to everything the Socialists had denounced before not only as immoral but in the long run as dangerous and self-defeating.

The effect of all this on the Socialist Par- ty itself and especially on its parliamentary standard-bearers is to bring them more and more into conflict with the Elysee. They have had to swallow a lot in recent months including severe austerity measures, and their restlessness is reflected even in the Government, which has reverted to speak- ing with two or more contradictory voices. The general nervousness is increased by the prospect that the party will suffer heavy losses in the municipal elections next March.

Meanwhile the rift between the party and the government it is supposed to support is finding open expression in the National Assembly. It did so in the recent conflict between the President and his parliamen- tary following over the rehabilitation of the four generals who led the attempted putsch against de Gaulle in 1961. The Socialists voted almost unanimously against it in the Assembly and secured its defeat, only to find that the President was so determined to show his authority that he resorted to a clause in the constitution, which he had hitherto denounced, in order to bulldoze it through parliament without a vote. Previous governments had used this device against the opposition, but this time a President was using it against his own ma- jority. He did this, he claimed, to keep an election promise — a vague one as it hap- pened — but in doing so he broke another which was never to resort to this particular constitutional device. The ground is now littered with broken promises and it is hard to avoid the impression that he was stub- born on this issue simply because he wanted to show the parliamentary party and the na- tion, in the best de Gaulle tradition, who was boss.