The subject carries all the taboos of incest. Easier, by far, to get someone to suggest that Henry Kissinger smokes pot with President Nixon than that Rene Levesque might be received for coffee by the Canadian desk officer. That was how Washington journalist Milton Viorst described his experience when he tried to discuss French-Canadian problems with American State Department officials three years ago.

As Viorst predicted, not much has changed: “Washington is likely to keep tiptoeing around, feigning delicately that the separatist movement in Quebec doesn't really exist.”