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FREEDOMWAYS                               
FIRST QUARTER 1973

positive relations, which will also give us security with regard to black Africa." (January 1970.)

On the other hand, the tendency to associate French capital with that of other imperialist countries has developed since the economic and political difficulties of 1968. The problems of the Middle East are usually put in relation to the Common Market. AUXERAP has given up a third of its shares in Saudi Arabia to American interests. In the Emirate of Dubay, a single oil society (Anglo-German-Franco-American) unites the oil societies operating there. But the French monopolies have in no way given up their own game. Similarly in the banking field, the Franco-Arab bank has multiplied its original capital by five. Credit Lyonnais has founded the Franco-Arab Union of Banks.

The class nature of this policy is therefore quite clear. French imperialism has tried, not without success to diversify its sources of oil supply. Here the state plays a decisive role, by the intermediary of the national society ERAP to be sure, but also by defining and applying a political line which aims at opening the Middle East to French capital and products. And if to achieve this end, French imperialism exploits all the difficulties of its rivals, like tham it feels the threat of the new progress made by the national movement. In this sense, it does not necessarily have an interest in just political solution to the Middle East crisis in the near future. The hostility of this neo-colonialist policy towards the national liberation movement is also very clear in the evolution of relations with Algeria.

Algeria
Powerless to prevent Algerian independence, the Gaullist government made a virtue of necessity and made efforts, not without success, to turn the Evian agreements to good account and to present itself as a "champion of decolonization." The cooperation with independent Algeria was a "model" of this. However the 1968 and 1971 crises clearly showed that since 1962 the French government had been following a neo-colonialist policy relying on the special bonds between Algeria and France to guarantee privileged positions to French monopolies, and to the oil companies first and foremost. Important aspects of the "cooperation" were used by the French negotiators to put pressure on Algeria. It was threatened with a reduction in its wine exports, in the quotas of Algerian workers allowed to work in France, in French and multinational "public aid" and they threatened to reduce the number of French teachers.

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