Mao Tse Tung and Prince Norodom Sihanouk

By ELLIS GOLDBERG

SAN FRANCISCO—In

IXon’s China tri y

e p, one’s
ae almost irresistibly
Broup of pial may seem. like a
drama it players in the great
Henry ae and his adviser,
Ali Bhussiger, have unfolded:
Siha, utto, Prince Nrordom

houk and Lin Piao.

It is indi
how »re"hans indicative of just

Breat a power the People’s
achublic of China is that heads of
deed Ba ceads of state and in-
like bit i y commanders seem
Tet Players in the politics Mao
Choy Se Chinese Premier
Pethaps it al are unfolding. And
also j oa in the final analysis,
Dolitic tive of the great power

Paying Mao and’ Chou are
Siha
ticular oe and Bhutto par-

Y, in recent i
earan public ap-
dicated Seem to have in-
Ch ae direction Mao and
pone in and what
», -Oommon agreement
Nixon find with President

Alessandns interview with
at Rast. casella publishe in
Jan’ a. ~'"2 Economic Review
head of ¢ thanouk, Cambodian
the Yoorate until 1970, attacked
Sihanoy PY:

@ group V2S toppled in 1970 by
headeq % military generals
Peking on? LOH Nol while in
Shortly 2 4N official visit; it was
“incur: terwards that the first
lerrito EtO0S into Cambodian
troo YS. and Vietnamese
SIHAN anes

Siha

ou

UK SCORNED

Under uk’s Tegime had been

attack petaty and political

mMunist poly a decade by
Mer Riess known as the

lmself at the head,
SUpplie c ene Khmer Rouge
Bale to ‘roops for his
Khmer Re oD bis throne. The
Suen qenee apparently con-
_ Sovernment with
Ported e its titular head and
e task y them as preferable
Nol “a5 " fighting both Lon
Hell j Manouk scorned.
like ‘ Would seem, has no fury
Shianoyy eek scorned.
“oRnized S government was
a Short order by the
d a. Public of China and in
they ‘i ning years by some 25
fete ments, including
a. am, North Korea and

been

r

@ j :
Aha with Casella,
. “CKed the USSR f
2 or
Hes Sane his government.
White” ght that the USSR as

untry wa 2
Be Of the vier ee

» Said Sihanouk, it was

SPLE’s worip

in the politics of the USSR to keep
the Vietnamese neither winning
nor losing but fighting forever.

The USSR, as Sihanouk ad-
mitted, is more than willing to aid
materially the guerilla front
fighting inside Cambodia. It
refused to recognize Sihanouk as
head of state, as the Soviet
periodical Literaturnaya
Gazyeta said in reply to the
Sihanouk interview within days
after it was published, precisely
because it doesn’t wish to
recognize Sihanouk as king—
rather the Soviet government
seems to believe the
revolutionary process inside
Cambodia will, go beyond
Sihanouk. =

Sihanouk himself admitted this
in the interview when he spoke of
his relationship to what he
calls ’my communists” as that of
Czech Premier Jan Masaryk to
the Czechoslovak Communist
party in 1947. As prince, Sihanouk
feels everything Cambodian is
his—even the Communists. |

Sihanouk, indeed, indicates
that would be in the interests of
the Nixon regime to aid him in
regaining his throne as the only
way to keep Cambodia
“neutral,” i.e., to keep it from
going ‘‘communist.”’

LIN PIAO’S DOWNFALL
Sihanouk’s words are all the
more bizarre considering the key

political role he seems to have
ananinad_in tha PRC in tha af.
ACYUILTU Lib Lae 2 ate ee uw Mn

termath of Lin Piao’s downfall.

The 1969 Congress of the
Communist: party of the PRC
made Lin Mao’s second in
command; that is in the party
constitution.

Lin Piao’s downfall according
to dispatches in Le Monde by
their Peking correspondent
Claude Julien and reprinted
recently in the U.S. radical
weekly newspaper, The Guar-
dian, occurred because he was a
had‘‘leftist’” who would have
preferred not supporting
Sihanouk in 1970 but rather aiding
only the Khmer Rouge.

Lin’s other political faults,
according to the Julien report,
included taking the wrong side in
the ‘complex problems posed by
the rebellions in East Pakistan,
Ceylon and the Sudan.”’

Lin’s view, except in the case of
Ceylon, would seem to have
mirrored the Soviet view of
supporting revolutionary or
democratic insurgents against
the governments they were intent
on overthrowing.

In Sudan, for example,
People’s China moral aid has
been applauded in the crushing of
the Sudanese Communist party
and the trade unions.

Sihanouk has emerged recently
into something of the position Lin
once held. Sihanouk’s picture
now often hangs beside that of

Mao, some reports fron China
indicate, surely an unusual honor
for a chief of state, and Sihanouk
was the only person outside the
tiny leading group of the Chinese
party that actually attended the
recent funeral of Chen Yi,
China’s foreigh minister.

A DELICATE QUESTION

The Sihanouk interview, which
was reprinted within a week in
the New York Times magazine
(indicating some maneuvering
beforehand as Times Magazine
pieces are not picked up at
random), seems to have given
some indication of where China is
going—it would seem Sihanouk
and his Chinese supporters could
easily content themselves with a
deal with the U.S. against the
USSR, even if that meant split-
ting the world antisimperialist
front. :

That. Sihanouk’s politics,
however, may not reflect wholly
those of the guerillas fighting
inside the country was indicated
in another L@ Monde piece by
Julien not yet reported inside the
US.

On Jan 15, Julien reported an
interview with Yeng Sary, an
“old-liner commander” of the
Khmer Rouge, whose political
activity includes seven years of
anti-Sihanouk struggle. :

Julien phrased a very delicate .

question for Sary: “How do you
explain to your people the fact
that certain governments not
aligned to Washington have not
yet recognized the royal

government?”’

LIN PIAO

Sary replied with equal
delicacy: ‘“‘We deeply regret that
certain countries with which
Cambodia does not have tight
bonds have not yet adopted a
position which conforms with
their long term and immediate
interests. The Cambodian people
menace no one. They do not
understand why governments not
aligned with Washington, still
less: those fighting against im-
perialism have not yet
recognized the reyai government
of national union. Now this aid
would greatly contribute to
hastening the return of peace.”

The position is similar to that
of Sihanouk’s in a general sense,
but it is sharply stripped of
Sihanouk’s anti-Soviet rhetoric.
Speaking in Peking, Sary could
only have consciously, avoided
such rhetoric, as do‘ the Viet-
namese and Korean am-
bassadors to the PRC, but as
Sihanouk did not in the Casella
interview. :

The Sary interview was ‘“‘the
first granted by a ‘historic chief
of the Cambodian guerillas,” i.e.,
one in the field before the Lon Nol
group that toppled Sihanouk.

GODFATHER
The Sihanouk line seemt to

CHOU EN-LAI

have been echoed recently by
Zulfihar Ali Bhutto, now head of
state of Pakistan who has
tightened his country’s links with
China in the aftermath of the
liberation of Bangladesh.

Bhutto has been responsible for -
tightening Pakistan’s links with
the PRC for almost a decade.

It was Bhutto in his second stint
as foreign minister and with
Yayha Khan, whom he has since
succeeded as head of state, who
set up Nixon’s China trip, by
providing a cover for Henry
Kissinger to meet with Chou
while supposedly sick in Pakistan
last summer. Bhutto is a god-
father of the U.S.-China thaw. °-

As foreign minister for

- Pakistan, Bhutto was one of the

early architects of Chinese-
Pakistan rapprochement, having
journeved there to conclude an
alliance with the Chinese
president Liu Shao-chi in 1965.

Bhutto quit the Pakistani
government that year when,
after a short war, a peace treaty
with India was signed at
Tashkent in the USSR. Bhutto
bitterly opposed what he called
“the politics of conciliation” with
India, having founded a party,
the Pakistan People’s party, to
fight a “thousand years of war
with India.”

On Feb. 8, the New York Times
printed an interview between
Dhuttn and CL, Sulzberger, a

DULY we

Times editor.

MARXISM?

Bhutto replaced military
dictator Yahya Khan as head of
Pakistan last December, and
claims to be introducing a
program of “Islamic socialism.”
Bhutto, however, rules under the
same military law Yahya Khan
ruled under, and his word is law.

Bhutto told Sulzberger that“‘the
Chinese understand our
viewpoint and liked it.”” Bhutto’;
statements may be perceptive on
occasion, but it isn’t Marxism, as
the following would indicate: “I
saw the necessity of analyzing
historic trends, and basing policy
on them. Thus one could see the
American mood was _ turning
against pacts and wanted to
recast policy from the bases of
the 1950’s. . . There was the
horror of Vietnam, a feeling that
the U.S. was overstretched, a
refusal to be a world policeman.”

Bhutto also put down India for
taking over Goa, a tiny Por-
tuguese colonialist enclave by
force in 1961. He called it one of

“‘seven aggressions in 24 years,”’ °

a claim the PRC has echbded on
occasion.

Bhutto also indicated to
Sulzberger that Pakistan wanted
to firm up its alliance with the
U.S. Bhutto said Chou En-lai told

‘both

him the U.S. made a “‘signal” to
India to stop the way for the
liberation of Bangladesh. (The
signal could well have been
elements of the Sixth Fleet
steaming up into the Bay of
Bengal.

Bhutto urged better relations
between China, the U.S. and
Pakistan on the basis that this
was the only way offset ‘“a
drastic shift in the balance of
power”’ in South Asia. The drastic

shift, of course, is the India-USSR __

treaty of last August, increasing
Soviet influence in the sub-
continent.

One reason India will regret .
greater Soviet influence, Bhutto
indicated, is that the USSR will
not demand ‘‘anything im-
mediate and sensational like
Soviet bases. There will be just
an undercurrent of subtle gains . .
. it is bound to gain influence in
Indian West Bengal . . . that part
of the world will come under
Communist influence.”

UNEASINESS?

‘Bhutto seems to see China dnd
the U.S. as standing in the way of
democratic and
revoultionary change.

The Chinese position for the
return of Bangladesh to Pakistan
would curtail any such
development of ‘“‘Communist
influence” in Bengal—east or
west, according to Bhutto.

Of the forthcoming Nixon
China trip, Sihanouk told Casella,
“T do indeed discern among some
of my Indochinese allies a certain
uneasiness.” If Bhutto and Chou
look at Indochina they way they
do at South Asia some uneasiness
would seem justified.

Sihanouk would seem to be far
enough removed from ‘this
communists” to feel uneasy with
them himself, for he says, “‘it is
possible that after liberation the
Communists will try to eliminate
from power the other forces. . .””

Coupled with the fall of Lin
Piao for advocating aid to the
revolutionary groups in Sudan,
Bangladesh and for opposing
better relations. with the U.S., a
picture emerges. .

Simply put the picture is one of
alliance with feudal landlords or
outmoded’ princes (pnuia aia
Sihanouk respectively) if they
have a certain state position and
if their politics are those of anti-
Sovietism.

U. S. PARTNER

Chou En-lai seems to be con-
structing a set of alliances with
various heads of state even at the
expense of vital and active
liberation movements, as in
Bangladesh, or Sudan, as a way
of Opposing what he calls ‘Soviet
social-imperialism.”’
_ Acting in concert with U.S.
imperialism however, China’s
foreign policy may become
further and further removed
from its proud boasts of being
defender of the Third World.

In fact, Nixon is putting off key
foreign policy questions of his

own, such as recognition of
Bangiaaesh, until after his

neeting with Chou.

An arrangement even if un-
spoken would seem to be in the
making and at least on ot its
cutting edges will be against the
USSR. Whether by design or not,
the leaders of the PRC may also
be turning another against
movements, as in the Sudan or
Bangladesh, where they are not
strong enough to meet the dif-
ficult task of gaining state power
on their own.

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—FRIDAY, MARCH 17, 1972—-PAGE7