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© Wake of last month’s wild west adventurism in
Of Sidra, concerns are mounting that the U.S. is
a full-scale attack against Libya.

agan administration is reportedly contemplat-
her “‘punitive’’ strikes against Libyan military
id, according to Time Magazine, has been

ith the aim of launching a co-ordinated inva-
la Suez, of the North African nation.
Scenario, revealed to the Washington Post by a
urce, was to ‘‘lure him (Gaddafi) into some foreign
ure of terrorist exploit that would . .. give one of
“'S neighbors, such as Algeria or Egypt, a justi-
tho Or responding to.Gaddafi militarily’’. ‘
hays oo these negotiations appear, for the moment,
te. fallen through, the Reagan administration ap-
Ome ©ommitted to the idea of ‘‘dealing with’’ Gaddafi at
A Point in the near future.
i +4 White House official told Newsweek magazine,
tora Can afford acontra program in Nicaragua, we can
ue Similar operation to dump Gaddafi. Whether
te € to use Hollywood extras or Egyptians or Mal-
Mie eetunners doesn’t make much difference. He’s
'Y a menace, and he’s got to go.”
ne cally, the recent attacks by the U.S. Mediter-
ea fee against Libya came at the exact moment the
cig 'administration’s umbrella justification for such
S Was pathetically expiring in a Rome courthouse.
°-called ‘terror network,” which saw a pyramid of
. "ism €xtending down from the Soviet KGB through

ave “middlemen’’ and Libyan ‘‘sponsors’’ to vir-

Beysty radical violent faction that ever existed, was
ith theePiece of the Papal assassination trial that ended
ant s| € acquittal of all Bulgarian and Turkish defen-

> ate last month. With it died the ‘‘terror network”’,

Nd al

B

tS shadowy ‘“‘Libyan hit teams”’ and “‘terrorist
mpetplans”. * r
4 : truth, however, makes little difference to the Rea-
ey a, histration. When one line of evidence unravels,
always ahead of the game, fabricating a new

B with Egypt, France, Israel, and perhaps —

Terror network’ covers
1.8. anti-Libya crusade

Backgrounder

Fred Weir

one. Now Libya is alleged, without a shred of evidence,
to have engineered the ‘‘disco bombing’’ last week in
West Berlin, and the TWA incident over Greece. A new
‘*Libyan terror masterplan’’ has been widely alluded to
in the media.

In fact, whatever rhetoric Gaddaffi may employ, he
cannot conceivably bear any responsibility for the indi-
genous struggles going on in Palestine, Ireland, Central
America, South Africa. The Reagan administration’s
second rationale, i.e., that the Gulf of Sidra is
‘‘international waters’’ and that they were simply exer-
cising ‘‘freedom of navigation’’ by sending in a carrier
task-force, is almost too ridiculous for words. Even U.S.
Presidential hopeful, Senator Gary Hart, was moved to
sneer: ‘‘There is always some fig leaf being used.”

It is hard to know whether Libya has a legitimate claim
to the Gulf of Sidra, but the probability is that they do.
There are a number of traditional claims that nations may
make under the law of the sea (such as the right of
‘“‘innocent passage’’ which the U.S. invoked when its
warships penetrated Soviet territory in the Black Sea last
month). One of these is the category of ‘historical
rights’, which a nation may claim over an inland body of
water which is vital to its own security. An example of
this is Hudson Bay, which technically ought to be inter-
national waters, but is not, it’s Canadian. Or Chesapeake
Bay, or Long Island Sound which are most definitely
American; and just imagine the fireworks that would
erupt if a Soviet fleet tried to prove otherwise!

The place to challenge the Libyan claim, if anyone has

On April 9 the Reagan administration ordered its carrier
task force back to Libyan waters. :

a genuine interest in doing so, is in the World Court not
the battlefield. (Libya, according to several international
legal experts, has a good track record for complying with
Court decisions). The Reagan administration, however,
despite all its gabble about international law, is staying
well away from the World Court these days, having
already been cited by that body for its illegal war against
Nicaragua.

So why is the U.S. really hitting on little Libya? In the
first place, it seems that Reagan has absorbed the lessons
of Grenada — and Margaret Thatcher’s triumph in the
Falklands — that there is no better way to rally the most
ignorant and jingoistic elements of the population, and
intimidate political opponents, than to have a Lovely
Little War. It cannot be a coincidence that the Libyan
diversion came just as the President was facing defeat in
the House of Representatives on his contra aid bill for
Central America.

In the long run, Reagan intends to do to Libya exactly
the same thing he plans for Nicaragua. This has been in
the cards since 1971, when Moammar Gaddafi showed
his true colors and kicked the Americans out of Wheelus
Air Force Base near Tripoli. (Wheelus was the second
largest U.S. military base outside the United States, next
to Clark Field in the Philippines). Gaddafi went on to
establish relations with the socialist countries,
nationalize industry — particularly oil — support oil
price hikes, implement. a program of land reform, and
generally support Arab nationalist. movements around
the Middle East. This is why the CIA has tried several
times to kill him, and why the Reagan administration will
send the Marines to the shores. of Tripoli yet again.

INTERNATIONAL FOCUS Tom Morris

re
one should
fey Doug Roche —

~ One ete
Ned Of the initiatives plan-

Mark the United Nations to
Pe, - 1986 as the UN Year of
at e, is an international con-
“ste this July in Paris on
di er Telationship between
Men, nament and develop-
: tou would think the topic
You hign enough, wouldn’t
It Not SO for the United States.
Will Ified the UN last week it
enn Jot take part in the confer-
.- that it’s doing enough al-
talkiy for peace (thank you) by
“and A iirectly with the USSR
Notiy lat it disagrees with the
~ there is a link between
that Wecnding and resources
able foul otherwise be avail-

; Th. World development.
Ott S position nudged even
ling Wa, which usually falls in

Org ith whate ver Reagan says

| Roche ete send out Douglas _

: » Canada’s disarmament
“the *Ssador, who boldly tells
Ould €ricans: ‘‘We believe it
the U be a better conference if
mee’ attends.”
Baga? In case this strong lan-
Add duended anyone, Roche
of that Canada “‘is not sure
© direct link’’ between

arms spending and world eco-
nomic development either.

What a tiger! That’s telling
those Yanks, Doug!

He obviously hasn’t heard
that a 1981 UN report said the
world can have an arms race or
third world development —
not both.

THE PRICE PAID FOR ARMS

9 schools Hydropower
a station
F-14 fighter at

aircraft carrier

36 three-room flats One tank battalion
= exercise
Leopard-2 tank ire
28 kindergartens

Trident

= . missile
one year's tuition =
for 16 million ;
children pi gpbatnerttals

The truth, of course, is that
Washington knows full well
that its present wild course will

be torn to shreds at any world

conference on military spend-
ing and world development.
That’s exactly why it won’t
send a delegation to Paris in
July.

Someone should tell our
poor ambassador.

There’s no end
to banality

A friend put it like this: “‘Just
when you think they’ve
reached the bottom in banality,
they crank the ratchet one
more notch.”’

He was, of course, referring
to an election in Carmel,
California last week in which
part-owner of the Hog’s
Breath Inn and spaghetti west-
ern star Clint Eastwood was

~ elected mayor. He won 72 per

cent of the votes for the $200-
a-month job and promised he
wouldn’t set his sights any
higher.

But some of us remember an
actor with the same talent level
who became a top circuit
speaker for General Electric,
then governor of California,

_ then president of the USA, and

who is now trying to end the

world along with his career.
There is, of course, no rea-
son why an actor can’t make a

good politician. After all, many

politicians are fine actors. It’s
just that we’re not through
with Reagan and here comes
Eastwood.

One Carmel resident, un-

- amused, commented: “‘If that

man gets in, I’m moving out of
town.”

ee

Mayor Eastwood may have
smiled when, one day after his
election, the U.S. Congress all
but ensured that the U.S. will
relax its gun laws. After all,
only 20,000 persons died last
year from gunshot wounds in
the U.S., and Clint’s films
made the Magnum 44 famous.

How VOA makes
Asian news

Some months ago we re-
ported that U.S. newsmen

_ were training Afghan ‘‘rebels”’

in the art of selling their cause
to the Western world.

Here are some of the results,
classical U.S. newsspeak, as
reported in the March 30 Pakis-
tan Times Overseas Weekly:

“Afghan Mujahideen have
shot down .two Soviet fighter

planes ... and attacked a
Soviet armoured convoy
damaging 18 military vehicle-
s.’’ The five paragraph story
goes on to report 27 Afghan
troops killed and 90 surren-
dered in that battle; 900
‘*Karmal troops’’ surrendered
in another battle, and in still
another skirmish, 20 armoured
cars destroyed in a ‘‘Soviet
Karmal’”’ convoy.

The source for this breath-

taking news? ‘‘Voice of —

America quoted Western dip-
lomats as saying the Mujahi-
deen ...”

Translation: *‘The radio sta-
tion of the Central Intelligence
Agency of the United States,
reported that State Department
and CIA officials stationed in
Pakistan say that their paid
agents operating inside
neighboring Afghanistan ...”

Another item in the same
paper reported that a conven-
tion of Afghans, held in New
Delhi, India, decided to hold a
meeting in Geneva, to set up an
‘Afghan government in exile.”
The Afghans in India talking
about a meeting in Switzerland
didn’t say where this govern-
ment in exile would be
headquartered. But the news
item did give a-source: Voice of
America.

PACIFIC TRIBUNE, APRIL 16, 1986 e 9