ABSTRACT
On 14 January 1963, the French president torpedoed the Brussels negotiations at a press conference in Paris. According to their memoirs, French negotiators in Brussels were first told the contents of President de Gaulle's speech in the middle of a negotiating session, as he delivered it. 1 It has even been suggested that his own Foreign Minister, Maurice Couve de Murville, did not know of the approach de Gaulle would take at the press conference - though in interview already Couve de Murville claimed that he had discussed the best approach to ending the negotiations with de Gaulle. 2
