Rene Pleven; Former French Prime Minister

Rene Pleven, a business executive and attorney who became a leader of the Free French in World War II, a wartime aide to Charles de Gaulle and twice was prime minister of France in the early 1950s, has died at 91.

Pleven, who died Jan. 14 of heart failure, was buried this week in his native Brittany, the rugged peninsula of western France.

An executive with a telephone company before the outbreak of World War II, Pleven joined the Free French after the fall of France to Nazi Germany in 1940. He was named minister of colonies under De Gaulle’s exile government and was in charge of keeping French territories under De Gaulle as a springboard to liberate France.

After the war, Pleven founded the small, centrist Democratic and Socialist Union of the Resistance with another young politician, Francois Mitterrand. Pleven headed the party until 1953, then joined another group.

Pleven twice served briefly as prime minister of the Fourth Republic in 1950-52. He also served twice as finance minister, twice as defense minister and once as foreign minister.

De Gaulle kept Pleven out of his government after returning to power in 1958, but Georges Pompidou named him justice minister after De Gaulle resigned in 1969.

Pro-American, Pleven convened a conference in Paris in 1950 to draft a plan for a European Defense Community that would bring North Atlantic and Western European armies under a single military command. It involved a rearmed Germany but was defeated by the Gaullists, Communists and Socialists.