There was a high Level of continuity with the policies of Charles de Gaulle especially in terms of nationalism, NATO, nuclear weapons, French Africa, and distrust of the British and Americans.
[5] Initially, Mitterrand, like British Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, was wary of German reunification, fearing that it would lead to the Federal Republic of Germany gaining too much power.
[8] He spoke at the Knesset about Israel's right to security and in favor of Palestinian state, a speech praised by diplomatic adviser Hubert Védrine as a "masterpiece of Mitterrandian farsightedness, tact, and courage.
[9] Mitterrand condemned the Israeli siege of Beirut during the summer of 1982 and he sent French Armed Forces troops to secure the safe evacuation of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) leadership and fighters from Lebanon.
[11] The sinking of the Rainbow Warrior, codenamed Opération Satanique,[12] was an operation by the "action" branch of the French foreign intelligence services, the Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure (DGSE), carried out on July 10, 1985.
[14] The French daily newspaper Le Monde printed newly declassified government memos and diplomatic telegrams revealing Mitterrand's support for Juvénal Habyarimana's regime on July 6, 2007.
[15] On April 2, 1993, after an agreement between Habyarimana and Kagamé which prepared the August 1993 Arusha Accords, conservative Prime minister Edouard Balladur envisioned to send 1,000 more soldiers, a proposition accepted by Mitterrand.
[15] The documents prove that the French government was aware of ethnic cleansings committed by Hutu extremists as soon as February 1993, a year before the assassination of Habyarimana which triggered a full-scale genocide.
[16] After the communist satellite regimes all collapsed in late 1989, Mitterrand proposed the creation of "a European confederation" designed to "associate all states of [the] continent in a common and permanent organisation for exchanges, peace and security."