ALGERIA: A Hope & a Promise

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"We are the victors," exulted France's U.N. Assembly Delegate Jacques Soustelle. The General Assembly, brushing off Arab demands that the French be ordered to negotiate with the Algerian rebels, had unanimously voted a mild resolution expressing the hope that a solution might be found in Algeria consistent with the principles of the U.N. Charter.

Actually, the French gained the day by promising the morrow. Foreign Minister Christian Pineau himself recognized that France had given "a kind of international pledge." Said Pineau: "The approval we have received at the U.N., notably on the part of the U.S., was largely due to the fact that we proposed a constructive solution to the Algerian problem." The constructive solution is still largely on paper. It calls for a ceasefire, elections in peaceful areas, followed by negotiations with the elected Algerians.

While Premier Guy Mollet hesitated between proclaiming a cease-fire outright as a starter and continuing secret efforts to talk the rebels into a cease-fire agreement, terror tightened its grip on Algeria. Much of the terror was to influence the vote. Halfway through an afternoon of football, bombs exploded simultaneously in two packed stadiums on opposite sides of Algiers, killing twelve and wounding 60. A father bent in horror over the headless body of his 20-year-old daughter. A Moslem candy vendor stared at the mangled form of his helper, took off running with his case of sweets and was cut down by a burst of police machine-gun fire. In the angry outcry that followed, police and troops swept through capital and countryside. At week's end authorities announced that they had arrested 573 "agents" in Algiers, and killed 1,000 more Algerians.