THE PRESIDENT'S DAILY BRIEF 19 JANUARY 1973

• Document Type: FOIA
• Collection: President's Daily Brief 1969-1977
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): 0005993720
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: T
• Document Page Count: 17
• Document Creation Date: August 14, 2016
• Document Release Date: August 24, 2016
• Publication Date: January 19, 1973

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The President's Daily Brief
a
19 January 1973
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Exempt from general
declassification schedule of E.O. 11652
exemption category 5B( I
declassified only on approval of
the Director of Central Intelligence
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THE PRESIDENT'S DAILY BRIEF
19 January 1973
PRINCIPAL DEVELOPMENTS
French President Pompidou's electoral coalition
is still trailing the Communist-Socialist alliance
in the opinion polls. (Page 2) At Annex we ex-
amine the current state of the campaign.
On Page 3, we report on Chancellor Brandt's second
inaugural address.
The implications of the Soviet and East European
response to the Western invitation for talks on
force reductions are examined on Page 4.
Moscow is still trying to enhance its influence in
Laos. (Page 5)
Singapore
(Page 6)
Peru may begin buying Soviet military equipment
on generous credit terms. (Page 7)
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NORTH VIETNAM
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FRANCE
With the first round of the National Assembly
elections little more than six weeks away, the polls
still show the Pompidolian coalition behind the Com-
munist-Socialist alliance. The. governing coalition--
though outwardly confident--is off to a slow start
as it casts about for ways to improve its prospects.
At this stage, it looks like President
Pompidou will get something less than the
clear-cut personal affirmation which a
strong coalition victory would bring him.
he is resigned
to the loss of some hundred seats in the
Assembly, which would leave the coalition
with only.a small majority. He fears that
a last-minute "whim" of the voters could
even result in defeat for the coalition.
At Annex we examine .the current state of
the campaign.
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WEST GERMANY
Chancellor Brandt Made his second inaugural
address yesterday, stressing that the Atlantic Al-
liance remains the basis of West German security
and that a US presence is indispensable for Europe.
Brandt turned aside strong pressures to criticize
American conduct, in Vietnam, but confirmed that he
is prepared to aid both parts of Vietnam after. a
cease-fire.
The Chancellor would like to see the powers of
the European Parliament broadened, and suggested
that his government will work for full European
political union. Brandt prophesied that with "te-
nacity and a sense of purpose" detente could be-
cornea reality. In this context, he said that
West Germany will improve relations with the USSR
and Eastern Europe, placing priority on reconcilia-
tion with Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Bulgaria,
but also seeking new areas of cooperation with East
Germany.
Brandt listed European inflation and interna-
tional monetary reform as two international prob-
lems having a serious domestic impact. He avoided
offering specific solutions to these problems or
to any others, perhaps recallinghis first inaugural
speech, when he offered specific legislative pro-
posals that later failed to pass in the parliament.
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USSR
The USSR and its allies, in agreeing to take
part in talks on force reductions in Europe, have
added that the talks should be open to "other Eu-
ropean states that indicate an appropriate inter-
est." The Hungarian official who presented his
government's note made it clear that this formula-
tion ?does not exclude neutrals.
This position, reached during the Warsaw
Pact meetings earlier this week, should
meet Romania's desire for broad partici-
pation in the talks and places the burden
on the West for excluding any interested
European state.
The Warsaw Pact proposals on participation
apply, as do the Western proposals, only to the
forthcoming preparatory talks, not the actual
negotiations planned to get under way next autumn.
The Pact countries proposed Vienna as the
site for the preparatory talks whereas the West
had put forward Geneva.
Most Western countries are not likely
to object to Vienna, and some prefer it
because other disarmament talks are
being held in Geneva.
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LAOS
Following the latest Lao negotiating session
on 16 January, Soviet Counselor. Grushin called at
the US Embassy for a review of the talks. He said
that Moscow expects a Vietnam "settlement" to be
announced in the near future and that this would
lead to "an early cease-fire" in Laos. He noted
the absence of an attack on Prime Minister Souvanna
Phouma in the latest Communist statement at the
talks, and he implied that his embassy had some-
thing to do with this. Grushin also suggested that
it would be useful for the US and Soviet embassies
in Vientiane to maintain substantive contact, "now
that the contest is being transferred from the bat-
tlefield to the negotiating table and eventually
into the political arena."
The Soviets recently have been seeking
to improve their relations with both the
government and the Communists. They ap-
parently see fresh opportunities in the
current situation to enhance their limited
influence in Laos vis-a-vis that of the
Chinese and the North Vietnamese.
Meanwhile military activity is continuing at
approximately the same level of the past several
weeks. On Wednesday, enemy ground attacks and
shellings dispersed two government battalions from
positions some 15 miles, southeast of Thakhek, a
provincial capital.
This action May be designed to divert
government attention while other North
Vietnamese forces to the east complete
their preparations for a push along
Route 9 to retake Muong Phalane.
.::Farther south, lead. elements of a 3,000-man
government force are Moving back toward the pro-
vincial capital of Saravane, from which they were
ousted last week. Opposition has been light so
far, but 'is" likely to increase as the government
force nears the town Despite heavy air strikes,
the North Vietnamese 968th Division and an anti-
aircraft regiment remain in the area and there
are indications that another regiment recently ar-
rived there from North Vietnam.
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SINGAPORE - SOUTHEAST ASIA
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PERU-USSR
The Soviets are making a strong pitch to sell
military equipment to the Peruvian Government. Pros-
pects are strong that the Peruvians will buy four
Soviet MI-8 helicopters. The Soviets are said to
be offering generous credit terms for this and other
military equipment in a bid to conclude their first
military sales in South America.
Soviet interest in Peru is also evident
in the impending signature of contracts
for new Soviet economic aid and the re-
cent Soviet agreement to assist in pre-
paratory work for the huge OZ-mos hydro-
electric and irrigation project in north-
ern Peru.
Peru's access to US military equipment has been
thrown in doubt since 12 December, when the seizure
of a US fishing boat caused suspension of Peru's
eligibility under the Foreign Military Sales program.
Since then Peru seems to have declared open season
on US tuna boats operating within its claimed 200-
mile territorial sea.
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THE FRENCH ELECTION CAMPAIGN
The Gaullist party, faced with its first cam-
paign without de Gaulle, confronts a real challenge
from the Communist-Socialist-left Radical alliance
in the National Assembly elections scheduled for
4 and 11 March. Except for inflatiop, on which
the government is clearly vulnerable, neither side
has been able to find a campaign issue that has
caught fire with the electorate. The government,
plagued by 18 months of scandals and internal dis-
sension and now handicapped by lackluster campaign-
ing, is off to a slow start. The left, in con-
trast, has put on a good show of unity in the last
several months and has managed to capture the head-
lines on more than one occasion. These factors,
coupled with the news that retail prices rose in
November at the highest rate since January 1969,
drove the Pompidolians to a new low--and the left
to an eight-point lead--in polls taken early last
month. While the most recent poll shows the gap
has narrowed, the governing coalition has a number
of difficulties to overcome in retaining control
of the National Assembly.
The Gaullist Coalition
President Pompidou's ouster of controversial
Jacques Chaban-Delmas as premier last June in fa-
vor of Gaullist purist Pierre Messmer gave the
coalition a greater sense of cohesion, but rifts
remain and sometimes come into the open. In De-
cember, for example, it became clear that relations
among the heads of the three parties--the Gaullist
Union of Democrats for the Republic, the Independ-
ent Republicans, and a small centrist party--were
growing more acrimonious. Gaullist party chief
Alain Peyrefitte came under heavy fire for his in-
ability to make decisions and his lack of vision
in planning election strategy. Pompidou was forced
to intervene personally to warn party leaders
against narrow partisanship in the face of growing
support for the united left. Despite this admoni-
tion, it took weeks of semi-public wrangling for
the coalition to agree on single candidates in
most of the election districts. While the lion's
share of those selected are members of the Gaullist
party, the lineup represents a more equitable dis-
tribution than in previous years. More importantly,
the agreement means the right will pose a single
opponent to the left in some 433 electoral districts
out of 490.
(continued)
Al
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Sticky charges of corruption among the Gaul-
lists are another cause of friction within the co-
alition. In early September, the latest scandal
broke--one of a series that has surfaced almost
continuously since mid-1971 explicitly or implic-
itly involving Gaullists in fraud, abuse of public
confidence, influence peddling, extortion, or out-
right theft. The government has been able to dampen
publicity on the latest incident, but the scandals
have compromised the party's image after 11 un-
tainted years under de Gaulle. While their impact
has been blunted by official moves to investigate
and correct the irregularities, additional revela-
tions could surface at any timewith damaging elec-
toral repercussions.
The government clearly is in trouble over in-
flation. With prices increasing at the highest
rate in ten years, the Pompidolians have reason
to remember that the French electorate tradition-
ally votes its concerns on bread-and-butter issues.
Paris announced new measures aimed at slowing in-
flation in December, but they are not likely to
have much effect--certainly not before the election.
Pompidou feels he must avoid anything so unpopular
as wage controls, which might be more effective.
Government leaders are attempting to minimize the
political impact of the price increases by stress-
ing that other industrialized nations also suffer
from inflation, some to a greater extent than
France, and that the competitive position of French
exports thus far has not been imperiled. These
explanations have not impressed the voters, and
the opposition is getting a lot of campaign mile-
age out of the "alarming" economic situation.
Voter apathy may also be a problem for the
Gaullists and their partners. The elections will
in no way be a rerun of 1968, when public reaction
to the mid-year student and labor crisis helped
swell the Gaullist vote to record proportions. A
high rate of abstention would tend to hurt the
Pompidolians because the leftists--in particular
the Communists--are highly efficient in getting
their voters to the polls. Because there is no
issue on which the left and right are presenting
clear-cut opposing programs, the government coali-
tion has had a tough time demonstrating the supe-
riority of its policies. Finding the opposition
an elusive target, it has resorted to the time-
honored campaign theme of the dangers of giving
power to the left. Although government spokesmen
loudly trumpet that only an anti-Communist regime
can maintain France's special, but independent,
relationship with the USSR, polls show that the
left no longer appears as a bogy to the middle-of-
the-road voter.
(continued)
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The United Left
Having gotten off to a slow and discordant
start after signing a precedent-setting "common
accord for governing" last spring, the leftists
had by November shown they could give the govern-
ment a good run for its money. More tightly or-
ganized than the ruling coalition, the leftist
alliance--composed of the Socialists, the Commu-
nists, and the left Radicals--has been better able
temporarily to submerge deep-seated differences
in the interest of the campaign.
Although there
appears to be no personal rivalry between Commu-
nist leader Georges Marchais and Socialist chief
Francois Mitterrand, most French Communists regard
the Socialist leader with deep suspicion. More-
over, his obvious aspiration to the presidency in
1976 must cause some tension. Mitterrand is rec-
ognized by the French electorate as a shrewd op-
portunist, but also as the man who gave de Gaulle
a close run in the 1965 presidential race and
pulled the left together last year.
Twice in the past five months, Mitterrand
has put the Communists on the spot while gaining
publicity for himself. A regional meeting of the
Socialist International in Paris last weekend,
which Israeli leader Golda Meir attended, increased
Mitterrand's stature as a national and international
figure. Earlier, in August, Mitterrand publicly
exchanged insults with the Soviet ambassador over
Jewish emigration from the USSR and Soviet policy
toward Czechoslovakia. In both cases the French
Communists, boxed in by their own ambiguous posi-
tion and their conflicting loyalties, came off a
poor second.
Mitterrand is anathema to the Soviets; who
see him as personally ambitious rather than devoted
primarily to the course of leftist unity. For
Moscow, the alliance of the French Communists with
such a person illustrates the underlying inconsist-
ency of their current position. The Communists
must keep their ideological fences mended with Mos-
cow while emphasizing at home their willingness
to abide by the rules of democracy if they win.
They must sustain their opposition to the govern-
ing coalition while struggling against Moscow's
clear preference for a continuing relationship
with the Gaullists.
(continued)
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The speech of Kremlin ideologist Suslov at
the French Communist Congress last month implied
Soviet reservations about the joint leftist program.
Soviet party chief Brezhnev subsequently met with
Marchais in Moscow, but there is no indication
that the Soviets will go out of their way to assist
the leftist campaign. In fact, by continuing to
cite Franco-Soviet relations as a model for other
West European nations and by scheduling the Brezh-
nev-Pompidou meeting for last week, Moscow is
making it clear that it would prefer to deal with
a Gaullist government.
Pres-
ident Pompidou will attempt to exploit his Russian
trip as an indication of his government's ability
to deal with the USSR, but since the visit centered
on foreign policy issues, he may not get much cam-
paign mileage out of it. The timing of the visit
irritated the French Communists, who were still
smarting from the recent official visit to France
of Marshal Grechko, which they also thought ill-
timed.
Center Split
The key to the March elections may rest with
centrist politicians who have remained outside the
government fold, and with middle-of-the-road and
uncommitted voters. The present grouping of the
electoral field into two major alliances may re-
sult in more winners in the first round than in
the last election. In districts in which no can-
didate gains an absolute majority of first-round
votes, however, centrists who choose to run in the
second round could drain votes from the governing
coalition and thereby indirectly aid the leftists:
Where centrist voters are faced with a choice be-
tween a Pompidolian and a leftist candidate, a
decision will be difficult for many of them.
If Pompidou loses a significant portion of
his legislative majority, he will have the option
of formally inviting centrists into his coalition
or of developing an informal working relationship
with some centrist legislators. Anticipating this
possibility, the centrists are pulled in two di-
rections. Although they could attempt to form a
center-left bloc, most would prefer to enter the
present governing coalition--a move which would
reunite the old centrist bloc. Some, however,
still have lingering hopes of translating into
reality their dream of a true centrist government
and are hesitant about being co-opted into the
Pompidolian fold.
(continued)
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Polls- Not Prophecy
Preferences measured in the polls do not
necessarily forecast the French voting pattern.
In the latest poll, for instance, although 43
percent favored the opposition, only 17 percent
of those questioned thought the left alliance
would actually win a majority. Fifty-one percent
predicted the Gaullists and their partners would
continue to govern in a coalition enlarged to
include the centrists, who have been receiving
about 14 percent of the votes in the polls. The
French traditionally vote in the first round
against their grievances and in the second against
their fears. This could work in favor of the gov-
erning coalition if it can arouse latent, though
evidently diminishing, public fears that victorious
leftists would radically change the French system.
If the campaigning gets rough, the governing coa-
lition will be tempted to exploit allegations that
Marchais and Mitterrand were Nazi collaborators,
but these charges are hard to prove. The leftists
would likely respond to this with sharpened at-
tacks on the more immediate issue of corruption
among coalition officials.
The central theme of the ruling coalition's
campaign is support for President Pompidou and
his policies. Pompidou of course would like a
clear personal affirmation, which would cancel
the less than enthusiastic response to his refer-
endum in April on enlargement of the European Com-
munities. He is not de Gaulle, however, and the
length of his coat-tails will be measured on 4
and 11 March.
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