From the moment of the Muslim riots in December 1960, which had so shaken de Gaulle in his hopes and which had occasioned a real turning-point in the war, everything seemed to be going for the F.L.N. Both at home and abroad the pressures had been mounting on de Gaulle to make peace. In the United States John F. Kennedy, the avowed friend of Algerian independence, had become president and was soon leaning heavily on de Gaulle. If the pressure needed any adumbration, in 1961 United States military aid for France was to be reduced to a tiny fraction of its 1953 total. Since the Melun debacle of June 1960, the various travels by G.P.R.A. leaders in pursuit of Communist bloc support had begun to arouse increasingly substantial echoes — none of which was missed by de Gaulle, his ears especially sensitive to this particular threat. At the end of October, on the eve of the sixth year of the war, Ferhat Abbas had rejoiced: "We had need of allies, and now we have found them in Peking and Moscow."

XREF: Cold War-era decolonization contexts and Soviet strategy of supporting anti-colonial movements during the 1960 UN General Assembly session.

Horne, Alistair, A Savage War of Peace- Alge…, loc. 1409