Below the surface, however, international victories were being chalked up by the F.L.N.; not least of all in the shifting of American policy. At the end of February 1957 an Arab “summit” composed of Syria, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Egypt convened in Cairo and, in a first display of Middle East unity, declared its total support for the Algerian cause. All this was duly noted in Washington, and the following month Vice-President Nixon arrived in Tunis to help celebrate the first anniversary of her independence. Following his meetings with Bourguiba, Nixon proposed to President Eisenhower a referendum whereby the Algerians could choose freely between the loi-cadre statute being prepared by Lacoste, or total independence. Then, in July, Chanderli’s influential friend in the Democratic opposition, Senator John F. Kennedy, rose to make an important pronouncement in the United States Senate. He challenged Eisenhower and Dulles “to place the influence of the United States behind efforts… to achieve a solution which will recognise the independent personality of Algeria and establish the basis for a settlement interdependent with France and the neighbouring nations”. He accused United States policy of representing “a retreat from the principles of independence and anticolonialism”; and, elsewhere, that it “furnished powerful ammunition to anti-Western propagandists through Asia and the Middle East”. No speech on foreign affairs by Senator Kennedy attracted more attention, both at home and abroad, and under such pressure United States official policy on Algeria now began to shift. Henceforth, instead of backing France at the United Nations, the United States would abstain. It was a serious blow for French policy, and a triumph for Chanderli, Yazid and the F.L.N. Finally, at the end of December, another success was registered by the Algerians when, at a new Afro-Asian conference hosted by Nasser in Cairo, they were accepted on an equal footing among the sovereign powers. At the same time an important first contact was made through their delegations with the U.S.S.R. and Red China.

Horne, Alistair, A Savage War of Peace- Alge…, loc. 767