Monsieur No

President Charles de Gaulle's press conferences take the form of a ritual ballet. The stage is the crystal-chandeliered Salle des F&234;tes in the Elysee Palace, and the corps de ballet is composed of some 700 newsmen crowded rump to rump in flimsy, gilt-painted chairs. The props are TV cameras, lights, a desk placed before a raspberry-red curtain. Enter le grand Charles, moving his head ponderously as he peers through the haze of TV flares and flash bulbs. With a wave of the hand and a clearing of the throat, De Gaulle makes some preliminary remarks before the questions begin.

As De Gaulle prepared to stage another of his rare press performances this week, political dopesters were betting he would use the occasion to give a haughty and ringing non to concessions for Britain's entry into the Common Market. He might also take the opportunity to repeat in public what he has already said in private about President John Kennedy's Polaris offer last month. After Kennedy's Nassau proposal, De Gaulle called in his ministers and became "Monsieur No," to the whole idea, reported the weekly Paris-Match last week.

De Gaulle declared: "France cannot in the future renounce its effort and abandon its project merely because Washington decides to present some proposals . . . We cannot accept Polaris missiles and, at the same time, pursue our national effort. Therefore we will follow our national effort..We have the Abomb. We will have the H-bomb. And, eventually, we will have three-stage missiles."

De Gaulle continued: "The American interest is not always the French interest. Circumstances change. Interests can diverge. This will be more and more true in the future, which will give Europe a greater and greater weight, and which will therefore contribute to diminishing the relative weight of the U.S."

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