U.S. Envoy to France to Quit Post in July
The U.S. ambassador to France, international banker Evan G. Galbraith, today said he will leave his post in July.
Galbraith said he took the job under the agreement that it would be for a fixed term, and “I had no intention of staying beyond four years.” He took the post Nov. 13, 1981, after having spent six years in Paris with Morgan Guaranty Trust.
As ambassador, Galbraith has been summoned by French officials three times to explain controversial statements.
In February, 1984, Galbraith said in a radio interview that “one knows very well that the French Communist Party has a special relation with the Soviet world. Everybody knows very well that the Soviet foreign policy is followed by the French Communist Party. Thus, one mistrusts people who are linked with the Communist Party.”
The Communists were at the time junior partners in President Francois Mitterrand’s Socialist-led administration. Then-Premier Pierre Mauroy officially criticized “the unacceptable nature” of Galbraith’s comments and summoned him for an interview.
Galbraith was twice summoned to the Foreign Ministry in the summer of 1982 for remarks on the Soviet gas pipeline to Western Europe and questions he raised about the rise of terrorism on the streets of France.
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