Algeria Independence France 1954-1962

<body> <p><b><font face="Arial" size="2">Algerian War of Independence 1954-1962</font></b></p> <p><font face="Arial" size="2">In the early morning hours of All Saints' Day, November 1, 1954, guerrillas of the National Liberation Front (Front de Libération Nationale -- FLN) launched attacks in various parts of Algeria against military installations, police posts, warehouses, communications facilities, and public utilities. From Cairo, the FLN broadcast a proclamation calling on Muslims in Algeria to join in a national struggle for the "restoration of the Algerian state, sovereign, democratic, and social, within the framework of the principles of Islam." The French minister of interior, socialist François Mitterrand, responded sharply that "the only possible negotiation is war." It was the reaction of Premier Pierre Mendès-France that set the tone of French policy for the next five years. On November 12, he declared in the National Assembly: "One does not compromise when it comes to defending the internal peace of the nation, the unity and integrity of the Republic. The Algerian departments are part of the French Republic. They have been French for a long time, and they are irrevocably French... Between them and metropolitan France there can be no conceivable secession." </font></p> <p><a href="algeria1954.htm"><font face="Arial" size="2"><b>Algeria Independence France 1954-1962</b></font></a></p> </body>