French Legislator Defends, Lauds DeGaulle's Policy of Independence

The strength of the free world and safety of Europe demands independent French action, said Jean-Noel de Lipkowski, chairman of the French National Assembly's Foreign Relations Committee, last night.

France will remain a firm ally of the United States, but it must be "an alliance and partnership with more equality," Lipkowski said in defending French independent economic, military and political policy.

The French legislator said that the Common Market could not accede to American demands for large tariff reduction in the near future. This could only weaken economically America's European allies, he said, nonetheless expressing optimism about a limited tariff agreement within the next two years.

Defends Blocking Britain

The chairman defended France's controversial obstruction to Britain's entry to the European Economic Community: "In refusing Britain's entry, we saved the Common Market." But he later added that "we would like them someday to join."

America's policy of conventional weapons as defense against conventional attack justifies an independent French nuclear deterrent, Lipkowski maintained. Russian conventional forces are so massive, he said, that they could advance to the Rhine and present the United States with a falt accompll before American nonnuclear retaliation.

Lipkowski felt that to prevent the takeover of Europe by a conventional attack, Europe must be able to threaten her own nuclear retaliation: "Do you believe Russia would have launched an attack on Budapest if the Hungarians had even a few planes with atomic bombs?"

Communism Weakened

The split in international Communism has strengthened, not weakened, that bloc, Lipkowski said; it has given the uncommitted nations the alternative Communist models of Yugoslavia, Russia and China. France can strengthen the free world in a similar manner, by offering an alternative model of a democratic government to the United States.