Nicaragua’s
international
coffee pickers
— page 10 —

U.S. troops protested

March 23, 1988
50S

Vol. 51, No. 11
<ai>

as Nicaragua on alert

Members and supporters of the Anti-Apartheid Network make their message clear at Shell gas station, Burrard and Davie

streets in Vancouver. The morning demonstration on Monday, March 21 — the 28th anniversary of the infamous
Sharpeville Massacre — served notice of the Boycott Shell campaign launched by anti-apartheid groups everywhere

because the petroleum corporation invests heavily in racist-ruled South Africa. The United Church, the B.C. Federation of
Labour and the Canadian Labour Congress have all supported the boycott of Royal Dutch Shell and its South African
subsidiary, and the United Nations’ oil embargo of South Africa.

Anger over the deployment of 3,200 Uni-
ted States troops in Honduras and the
deployment of some of them on the
Honduras-Nicaragua border area erupted
across the United States and in British
Columbia last week in demonstrations
against U.S. interference in Central Amer-
ica.

In San Francisco, Chicago, Minneapolis,
Washington and other U.S. centres demon-
strators picketed federal buildings and
marched in the streets to demand that the
Reagan administration withdraw the troops
of 82nd Airborne and the 7th Light Infan-
try, and cease intervention in the region.

Some 120 Victoria residents held a can-
dlelight vigil outside the legislature Sunday
night, while demonstrators gathered at
Vancouver’s Robson Square the preceding
evening.

Congressional Democrats, meanwhile,
have accused the administration of using a
clash between the forces of Nicaragua’s
Sandinista government and the U.S.-
financed contras seeking the overthrow of
that government as a pretext for escalating
U.S. involvement.

The troops were dispatched March 16
after Honduras claimed Sandinista troops
had penetrated Honduran territory in pur-
suit of the counter-revolutionaries who
have been killing villagers and project
workers inside Nicaragua. The contras have
been based in the country, used also as a
U.S. military base of operations, since 1981.

Since then U.S. helicopters have helped
airlift Honduran troops to the scene of the
fighting, in the northern region known as
Bocay. Straddling both sides of a river, the
territory has long been a subject of jurisdic-
tional dispute between the two countries.

see CRISIS page 2

Jobs in peril as gov't bows to GATT rulings

Calling the federal government minis-
ters “wimps” for bowing to two final rul-
ings brought down by the General
Agreement of Tariffs and Trade (GATT),
Jack Nichol, president of the United
Fishermen and Allied Workers’ Union
declared Monday that his union would
“fight like hell” to prevent shoreworkers’
jobs from being exported.

Earlier the same day, International
Trade Minister Pat Carney told the House
of Commons that the government would
not exercise its right to veto two rulings
brought against Canada by GATT panels.
One ruled that differential markups app-
lied to imported and domestic wine and
beer were discriminatory, while the other

determined that export regulations which
stipulate that pink and sockeye salmon
and roe herring must be processed in Can-
ada before being exported are a violation
of GATT trade rules.

In the latter case, the elimination of the
export regulations could cost British
Columbia between 3,000 and 5,000 jobs in
the fish processing industry. Both rulings
were to be adopted by the full GATT
council, which was meeting in Geneva
March 22.

Although the ruling could have been
blocked by Canada’s veto, Carney told the
Commons Monday, “It is the govern-
ment’s intention to allow adoption of the
GATT panel report and to dismantle the

GATT-inconsistent regulations by Jan. 1,
1989.”

She insisted that Canadian industries
would be subjected to “the law of the
jungle” if Canada had decided not to
accept the GATT panel reports.

But by its decision, the federal govern-
ment has simply capitulated to the Ameri-
cans and compromised its own sovereign-
ty, Nichol charged.

“Carney preaches to us about the
virtues of GATT but we’re talking about
one of the greatest offenders on GATT
anywhere in the world,” he said, noting
that the U.S. has frequently refused to
implement GATT decisions.

The export regulations were entirely
consistent with the Law of the Sea and

with other countries’ practice, he said.
“And Canada should have declared that
they were prepared to have them stand.”

The union had waged an intensive
campaign in communities coastwide in an
effort to compel the government to nego-
tiate an equitable solution with the
U.S. — which had initially lodged the
complaint with GATT — or, failing that,
to veto the final adoption of the GATT
panel report as any GATT member-
country can do.

The union, together with the Prince
Rupert-based Amalgamated Shorework-
ers and Clerks and industry representa-
tives, sent a lobby to Ottawa earlier this
month to press the campaign with MPs

see UFAWU page 3