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On January 7, 1935, the French Foreign Minister Pierre Laval and Italian Prime Minister Benito Mussolini signed the Italo-French agreements in Rome.
Pierre Laval succeeded Louis Barthou as Foreign Minister after his assassination in Marseilles at the side of the Alexander I King of Yugoslavia on October 9, 1934. He borrowed from his predecessor the idea of a system of collective security intended to contain the threat of Hitler in Europe. On January 4, 1935, Pierre Laval went to Rome, capital of Fascist Italy, to meet Mussolini. It was the beginning of a diplomatic offensive intended to enclose Hitlers Germany in a network of alliances.
He proposed a treaty to Benito Mussolini that gave Italy parts of French Somaliland (now Djibouti), redefined the official status of Italians in French-held Tunisia, and essentially gave the Italians a free hand in dealing with the Abyssinia Crisis with Ethiopia. In exchange for this, France hoped for Italian support against German aggression.

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Source

★ Langer, William L. ed., 'An Encyclopaedia of World History', (1948), Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston. Pg. 990.

See also

★ Stresa Front