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16.01.2007 16:11:54
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Современность; Армия;
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Франция в середине 1950-х хотела присоединиться к Великобритании
Добрый день!
Французский премьер Ги Молле на переговорах с британским коллегой в 1956 г предложил присоединить Францию к Великобритании, сделав Елизавету 2 главой объединенного государства. Об этом говорят недавно открытые британские документы. Интересно, имел проект хоть какой-то шанс на реализацию?
France proposed merger with Britain in 1950s
by Phil HazlewoodMon Jan 15, 4:01 PM ET
Former French prime minister Guy Mollet proposed merging France with Britain in the 1950s, with Queen Elizabeth II as head of state, media reported, citing formerly secret documents.
The proposal for a "Frangleterre," as the BBC called it in its report, comes from previously classified papers unearthed from Britain's National Archives when Mollet met his British counterpart Anthony Eden on September 10, 1956.
A British cabinet paper from the day read: "When the French Prime Minister, Monsieur Mollet, was recently in London, he raised with the prime minister the possibility of a union between the United Kingdom and France."
At the time, France was facing up to the escalating Suez crisis and threatened by separatists in French-run Algeria who were being funded by Egypt's president Gamel Abdel Nasser.
The BBC said Mollet -- an avowed Anglophile and admirer of the British welfare state -- was keen to fight back against Nasser on both fronts and determined to secure London's help to do so.
But with France an ally of Israel and Britain of Jordan, he also wanted to avoid French and British troops fighting each other as tensions mounted along the Israel-Jordan border.
Eden turned down Mollet's request for a union but the French prime minister had a plan B: while Eden was on a visit to Paris, Mollet asked for France to be allowed to join the British Commonwealth.
That would effectively have made Queen Elizabeth II the head of state in France, which became a republic in a bloody revolution against the ruling monarchy in 1789.
According to a document from September 28, 1956, the British prime minister reacted enthusiastically to the proposal when he discussed it with his cabinet secretary Sir Norman Brook.
"Sir Norman Brook asked to see me this morning and told me he had come up from the country consequent on a telephone conversation from the prime minister who is in Wiltshire (southwest England).
"The PM told him on the telephone that he thought in the light of his talks with the French:
"That we should give immediate consideration to France joining the Commonwealth.
"That Monsieur Mollet had not thought there need be difficulty over France accepting the headship of her Majesty (Queen Elizabeth II).
"That the French would welcome a common citizenship arrangement on the Irish basis."
But the proposal seems to have been quietly forgotten, the BBC added, saying it could find no record of the conversation in the French national archives.
The British documents were declassified two decades ago but had lain "virtually unnoticed since," said BBC radio presenter Mike Thompson (news, bio, voting record), whose programme on the subject, "A Marriage Cordial," goes out Monday.
The programme includes a French academic and politician spluttering with amazement at Monnet's proposal.
But the plan was not a new one: the Free French of General Charles de Gaulle proposed an "indissoluble union" to counter Nazi aggression after the German invasion of France.
"The Declaration of Union" -- dated June 16, 1940 -- proposed that France and Britain become one nation with joint citizenship, shared government and armed forces, the abolition of customs and a single currency.
But the plan, put to Britain's wartime prime minister Winston Churchill, did not see the light of day, after the French government was replaced with Marshal Philippe Petain as head of state, who signed an armistice with the Germans.
Jean Monnet, the head of the Franco-British co-ordination council who put forward the plan and later became the architect of European union, recorded his disappointment in his memoires, saying it was a "day of missed opportunities".
France signed the Treaty of Rome in 1957, establishing the European Economic Community with alongside West Germany, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg.
Copyright © 2007 Agence France Presse. All rights reserved. The information contained in the AFP News report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of Agence France Presse.
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