vistnamese visitors at a press conference in Vancouver Fri
at, members of the Provisional Revolutionary Governmen
Nternational relations department of the Vietnam Women s

the journal of philosophy published by the Vietnam Workers Party.

Vietnamese delegation
Outlines PRG program

Fr Cont'd from pg. 1
I ance, Switzerland, Holland and
taly. :

sa reunification of Vietnam
. take time,” Phat said, but the
Ocess has already begun “‘step
Step.” The first steps toward

n He ah: :
_ 2malization of relations between

© two governments of Vietnam
ve been taken. Communications
Meee are now open between
and South and a bus service
€en Saigon and Hanoi has

0 put into operation.
€ demands on the service are

| °° great,” Duong related, ‘‘that it

reccessary to reserve two or
Be days: in advance.” Mail
vice and railway lines from

en to South have also been
pened.

ee reminded newsmen that by

agers of the 1954 Geneva
and Grn Vietnam is one country
hat the division along the 17th

rallel was to be a temporary one
hela National elections could be
rae He said the program for
a Nification of the country is

fady stipulated in the Geneva

accords. ‘There is a new situation
now,” he continued, “but we
believe the time is not too far
away.”

The PRG. official reiterated the
appeal of his government to
countries who have accepted
“refugees” to allow them to return
to Vietnam. He said there were
three groups of people who left in
the refugee programs. First were
“the close collaborators with the
Saigon regime, the army and US.
administration; second were the
rich, who. feared their . private
property would be confiscated.
Finally there were those who were
forced to leave the country —
panicstricken people.”

He said the problem now is not
with refugees, but with those who
wish to return. ‘‘We appeal to all,”
he said, ‘‘to come back and aid: in
the reconstruction of our country.
We wish to implement a policy of
reconciliation and national con-
cord. Their need be no fear of

reprisals against former
collaborators of the Saigon
regime.”’

What image is blown?

edi lowing are excerpts from an
torial in the May 16 issue of The

‘Sherman, entitled ‘Who has
°wn what image?”
Of all British Columbia

atticians who have offered their
ae on Vietnam, it has remained
ma ill Bennett, the vain, shallow
niga who wears his father’s shabby
earn’ 28 Social Credit provincial

€r, to demonstrate how little

a understands the significance of

ans beyond the boundaries of
South Okanagan riding.

repcizing on Peter Rolston’s
me ark at the Vancouver May Day
prune that he and other New
a ere MLAs toasted the end
of cha War in Vietnam with a glass
ampagne at Victoria, Bennett

S :
ade to turn it to cheap political
Vantage,

The new modern image the

1S trying to project has been

N by the action of this group’,

.~ 48Serted. “I say the whole war

letnam is a tragedy. There is

Minas We are all losers. It is
4 Situation to celebrate.”

blow

no

Since Bennett is so ready with an
pein, he can hardly object to
Ving his credentials examined.
Wap ot agree with him that the

Was a tragedy, but not one

0

which he did anything to shor-
LEN aes: ;

To Bennett there are no winners,
only losers. But the only losers are
the political and military
strategists at Washington who
thought they could defeat in
Vietnam the same revolutionary

spirit by which the American

people themselves won their War
of Independence two centuries
ago...

The people of every country are
the winners, for the ending of the
war in Vietnam eliminates an area
of international conflict,
strengthening peace and detente.
Rather than the NDP, it is Bennett
who has blown his ‘new modern
image.”

The need now in Vietnam is for
international aid to help the people
restore a land ravaged and
poisoned by every diabolical
method of warfare short of nuclear
weapons. Harold Steves (NDP,
Richmond) has suggested that the
Barrett government should make
available immediately the $2
million for aid to Vietnam already
approved by an all-party com-
mittee of the legislature:

If Bennett can rise above par-
tisan politics for once, he should at
least be able to identify himself
with this humanitarian gesture.

—Sean Griffin photo

day. Left to right, Do Chi Duong and Vo Than
t’s delegation to Paris; Phan Thi An, head of the
Union in Hanoi, and Duong Thi Toa, editor of

The liberation of Da Nang, he
noted, was proof of the ‘‘real im-
plementation of the reconciliation
program.’ More than 103,000
prisoners were taken at Da Nang
but all have been released with
passes to return to their villages
and families.

All former political prisoners
were released simultaneously with
the liberation of Saigon. Ironically,
Phat commented, five Americans
were found in Saigon jails — and
they too are now free. ‘‘There are

presently no political prisoners in -

Vietnam,” he asserted.

Asked of future relations with the
U.S., Phat replied, ‘‘it will depend
on them.” He said that the
Americans have a responsibility to
aid in the reconstruction of South
Vietnam. ‘‘This was stipulated in
the 2ist article of the Paris ac-
cords,’’ he stressed. “We still
demand that the U.S. government
carry out the terms of this
agreement.”

The four visitors left Vancouver
on Monday for Vietnam.

eens

“WE END OF THE DOMINO THEORY

CITY RALLY TOLD:

U.S. Cambodia attack
deliberately provoked

“We will probably never know
the full story of the seizure of the
U.S. freighter Mayaguez off the
coast of Cambodia until a future
edition of the Pentagon Papers,”
Tribune editor Maurice Rush told a
public meeting at the Conlab Hall,
in Vancouver last Friday.

He said the American military
action bore all the earmarks of a
deliberate provocation to give the
U.S. government and Pentagon an
excuse to stage a demonstration of
U.S. military might in Southeast
Asia after its defeat. ‘‘What was a
US. freighter carrying a large
shipment of arms doing off the
coast of Cambodia at this par-
ticular time when the U.S. knew
the Cambodians were intercepting
other foreign freighters passing
through their waters?’’ he asked.

Rush said there was no necessity
for the staged military show of
strength which seems to have been
the main aim of the U.S. He pointed
to news reports to show that the
new government in Cambodia had
announced some time before the
attack and bombing of the Cam-
bodian mainland that the freighter
and its crew had been ordered out
of Cambodian waters. ‘‘President
Ford and the Pentagon did not
want a peaceful settlement of the
incident. They wanted an op-
portunity to ‘show the flag’
regardless of the cost in U.S. and
Cambodian lives;’”’ he charged.

Tracing the long struggle of the
Vietnamese people against
Japanese, French and U.S. in-
vasion, Rush pointed out that when
World War II ended 30 years ago
with the defeat of the Axis, U.S.
prestige and influence as a world
power was at its peak. ““Compare
that with the standing of the U-S. in
the world today, 30 years later,
when the mightiest imperialist
state of all was forced to flee
Southeast Asia in a panic and
suffer the first military defeat in
its history at the hands of a small
Asian country. That’s a measure of
the change in the relationship of
world forces which has taken place
in those 30 years,” said Rush.

The Tribune editor said that the
defeat of the U.S. in Vietnam
marks the collapse of U.S. im-
perialist policy in Southeast Asia
and is a serious setback for im-

perialist policy in Asia. It further
changes the balance of world
forces in favor of the  anti-
imperialist and socialist camp and
strengthens those forces on a world
scale fighting for detente and
world peace.

“For the first time since the
early 1930’s there is no active
theatre of war anywhere in the
world now that the war in In-
dochina is over,’’ Rush pointed out,
adding that, “‘it’s the job of the
world peace forces to keep it that
way and to see to it that out-

' standing differences which exist in

various parts of the world are
settled by peaceful means, through
negotiations.”

Rush warned that although U.S.
imperialism has suffered a major
defeat, it would be wrong to un-
derestimate the damage they can
still do to the struggle for peace
and independence in Asia. ‘“‘The
Cambodian events in the last few
days around the Mayaguez in-
cident point to the kind of
provocative action the U.S. is still
capable of. The setback the U.S.
has suffered in Asia is not
unrelated to their shifting of their
major new nuclear ‘first strike’
weapon, the Trident sub base, to
the Pacific. Nor should we un-
derestimate the ability of the U.S.
to take advantage of the policy of
the leadership of the government
in China to divide progressive
forces in Asia and to play both ends
against the middle.”

Pointing out that the victory of
the people of Vietnam, Cambodia
and Laos has opened the way for
these peoples to solve théir own
problems without foreign in-
tervention, Rush said: ‘‘They have
won the struggle for their in-
dependence, now they are faced
with the task of solving the deep-
going social problems in each of
their countries in their own way
and through peaceful means.”’

Rush said it was important to be
aware of the fact that the countries
of Indochina are at different stages
of social development. ‘‘In North
Vietnam they have been building a
socialist society for the past 20
years with the aid of the socialist
world. But in Cambodia and Laos
they are confronted with carrying
through a_ national democratic
revolution before they can move on
to tackling socialist tasks. In
Vietnam,”’ Rush said, ‘‘there are
two social systems — in the north
and south. In South Vietnam the
Provisional Revolutionary
Government faces the task of
carrying through a _ national
democratic revolution which will
open the way to the future building
of socialism.

Recalling discussions he had
with Vietnamese leaders during
his visit to North Vietnam nine
years ago, Rush said there will be
no rush to unify north and south
Vietnam. Ultimately there will be
reunification, but it will be on a
voluntary and democratic _ basis
and may take some time.

Lashing out at the Canadian
government’s role in Indochina,
Rush said it ‘‘smells like an
outhouse.” Not only have we spied
and carried ultimatums for the
U.S., CIA and Pentagon, but we
have also been a major supplier of
arms, explosive and components
for U.S. weapons which destroyed
much of Vietnam, Cambodia and
Laos. ‘‘We owe it to those people
now to see to it that Canada acts to
undo the harm it did by extending
not only formal announcements of
recognition, but actual recognition
and extension of long term aid to
all parts of Indochina to help them
quickly rebuild their country,’ he
said.

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—MAY 23, 1975—Page 3

4