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