4 By PETER AVIS Morning Star The Falangist militia who raz- ed to the ground last month, the Moslem shanty town of Qua- Tantina on the outskirts of Bei- Tut, completed, perhaps, their final act of madness in a vain and vengeful conspiracy to turn the clock back in Lebanon and throughout the Middle East. Today, after nine months of frenzied bloody conflict, in which Some 10,000 people have been killed and thousands more made homeless, the little republic on the shores of the Eastern Medi- terranean, has found a tentative peace, ‘After more than-a score of C€asefires that have been broken Within hours, an agreement has been made between the principal Political leaders and guaranteed by neighboring Syria with the Participation of the Palestine iberation Organization. Tackling: Fundamental Problems This offers a real prospect of tackling some of the fundamen- tal political and economic prob- lems that are the cause of Leba- Non’s deepening crisis. _ Following Quarantina and the creased attacks by right-wing Militia on the Palestine refugee Camps (which provoked the ine- Vitable counter-assaults on _hit- herto untouched Christian com- Munities that the Falangists — modelled on Mussolini’s fascists —feigned to protect) it seems that’ even Lebanon’s most reac- Nonary politicians have been driven into recognizing certain Mescapable realities. These are, first of all, that the Pursuit of violence and sectarian division, leading logically to the Partition of the country along re- ligious lines, can serve the inter- €sts of no section of the com- Munity — not even the_profit- Making activities of a ruling Class that has shown itself to be Temarkably devoid of concern Or the country in which its pponess empire has been spawn- _Lebanon’s troubles did not be- &In nine months’ ago with the unprovoked slaughter of a bus- Cad of Palestine refugees by a eeu of extremists claiming al- €giance to the Maronite Chris- van church. That particular hor- ne merely set in motion the atest and most violent phase in 4 long history of civil conflict in €banon. ; The French colonialists who a up the Christian leaders as i Presentatives of ‘Western civi- eerion” in the Arab world sow- ii Seeds for’ many of the trage- Mes to follow. And, indeed, even older seeds sae sown by those earlier in- é ers; the lion-hearted Crusad- heroes of our childhood his- nee. books, whose 20th-century ®scendants seek to present to- ae conflicts in the crude €gories of religious war. National Pact But “their language. and their ytaviour have nothing to do 1th the Gospel,” declares’ Fa- cae Gregory, the deposed Greek Roenodox Archbishop of Leba- On. “They simply behave like poets defending their privile- pute “chiefs defending theit hvileges” were given the insti- _jttional framework to do so by ‘he National Pact of 1943, when Se Falangists line up prisoners during their attack on the Quarantina oe during the last days before the ceasefire. the. French mandate, over the territory came to an end. Thus, both the president and the army commander-in-chief were always to be Christians and there was to be a 6-5 majority in favor of the Christians in the parliament. This “power-sharing” carve-up was acceptable to the bourgeois and feudal leaders of the Mos- lem community 30 years ago. But much has happened since then to change the balance of forces and to sharpen the con- tradictions in Lebanese society. It is not possible to separate Lebanon’s. internal problems from the resurgence, since the 1960s, of the Palestinian strug- gle for national self-determina-. tion. The existence of an organized Palestine. liberation movement cn Lebanese soil (the Palestini- ans don’t want to be there, but that’s the place they were push- ed into) has heightened the sense of solidarity between deprived Arab peoples, creating “a com- mon front of the oppressed” as Palestinian leader Abbu Ayad has described it. This -has made Palestinians and Lebanese common victims of an international conspiracy, in which U.S, money and arms have been used by Israeli and Leba- nese rulers in an attempt to crush all those in Lebanon who aspire to change an old order. Common Interests Lebanese workers and Pales- tine refugees have found com- mon interests with the exploited peasants of the south, constant victims of military attacks from across the Israeli border. And now many section of the middle class, including Chris- tians who owed allegiance to the Maronite leaders, have suffered from the violence wished on them from above and have come to realize that many things must be changed in a country so ob- scenely divided between rich and pocr. In this situation, Lebanon has experienced the growth of an organized and militant. left, in- cluding the Progressive Socialist Party of Kamal Jumblatt, the Lebanese Communist Party and many other left-wing and na- tionalist groups like the Nasser- ites and the Baathists. The progressive front has been able to transcend the division of the population into religious and ethnic communities and to re- place it by an awareness of .the oprcsition between privileged ‘social strata and the deprived masses. During the last battles, in which both Moslems and Chris- tians have so cruelly suffered, the balance of forces, both in- side Lebanon and international- ally, has made it impossible for the ruling class to call in the U.S. marines to sort things out to its advantage — as ex-Presi- dent Chamoun (now interior minister) did in 1958. Moslem Equality The pclitical agreement on which the present ceasefire is based — if it is not sabotaged now by the Maronite leaders — will give the Moslems an equal- ity of seats in parliament and, more important, will break down the system whereby all senior posts in the administration and the army have been awarded on religious criteria. This can represent the first real step toward democracy, from which a state without sec- tarian divisions could eventually be built. Khalil Debs, political bureau member of the Lebanese Com- munist Party and editor of its daily paper An Nida, said last month that the first task was to convince the -Christians that the Falangist plan for their fu- ture was suicidal: “The solution of their prob- lems is not to live in a ghetto . . . Like those of other beliefs, the majority of Christians are oppressed by a minority of ex- ploiters intent. on conserving their privileges.” In February 1976; that lesson, perhaps, is finally being learned. “The presence of the Com- munists,” said Debs, “is a guar- antee to prevent sectarianism developing among the Moslems, because our party includes work- ers and intellectuals of all reti- gious backgrounds and _ has thereby greatly contributed to taking sectarianism. out of the struggle.” ~And the future, when the pre- sent gross injustices are brought to an end? “The Lebanon that we want, said Khalil Debs, “‘is a Lebanon in which all, Christians, Mos- lems, the left and the right, will be able to express themselves freely, a Lebanon in which vio- lence will have been banished from political life. “We want to struggle demo- cratically. for Socialism, so that jt may come to be accepted by the majority of the Lebanese people.” 29> DUTCH MERCENARIES RECRUITED FOR ANGOLA BRUSSELS — Large numbers of mercenaries are leaving the Netherlands for Zaire, on their way to fight in Angola, a Brussels newspaper charged Feb, 3. ‘‘Le Drapeau Rouge” said that more than 150 Dutch mercenaries were recruited by Zaire agents and left for Zaire via a secret airfield in Belgium. CONFERENCE APPEALS FOR ANGOLA RECOGNITION LUANDA — An appeal to world opinion for recognition of the People’s Republic of Angola was made here Feb. 4 on the closing day of.the International Emergency Conference in Solidarity with the People of Angola. The conference, sponsored by the Afro-Asian Peoples Solidarity Organization, was attended by representatives of about 70 countries. The appeal included a plea for a vigorous campaign to end the re- cruitment of mercenaries to fight in Angola. A general policy declaration adopted unanimously said: “The cause of Angola is the cause of Africa at large, and the cause of the whole progressive humanity, which could and should promptly exert its influence to end this ruthless aggression.” TWENTY-FIVE AFRICAN NATIONS RECOGNIZE ANGOLA YAOUNDE — The west African country of Cameroun gave offi- cial recognition to.the People’s Republic, of Angola Feb. 2. It was the 25th Organization of African Unity member to recognize the republic, which is headed by: Agustihno Neto. The OAU has 46 member nations in all. MORO GETS BACKING FOR NEW GOVERNMENT IN ITALY ROME — Premier-designate Aldo Moro, whose coalition govern- ment collapsed Jan. 7, has received the backing of three Italian parties to form a new government, The Socialist, Social Democratic and Republican parties voted to support’ a minority Christian Democrat government at least by abstaining on parliamentary confidence votes. They are the same parties who formed the last coalition. The backing means Moro has the go-ahead to form a govern- ment, cancelling the prospect of a general election. If there had been an election it was felt the government may have been formed by the Communist Party, or the Christian Democrats would have been forced to form a coalition with the Communists. The Communists are the second largest political party in Italy and hold the second largest number of seats in parliament — 175 to the Christian Democrats 260. COMMUNIST PARTICIPATION NEEDED IN ITALY BERLINGUER SAYS ROME — Communist Party participation in Italy’s government is imperative if the country is. going to overcome its present poli- tical and economic crisis, Enrico Berlinguer said in an interview last week. The Italian Communist Party general secretary said that the col- laboration of a party which gains 33% of the vote and which has the support of the majority of workers is indispensable. Berlinguer said Italy needs a substantial change in the political direction it has had after nearly 30 years of coalitions that excluded the Communist Party. = ECC COUNTRIES HAD A BAD YEAR BRUSSELS — The European Common Market (EEC) had a bad economic year last year, data released from EEC headquarters in Brussels Feb. 4. showed. There was a 6% fall in industrial output in . the nine EEC countries taken together. Unemployment increased by 40% overall. In France the unemployment increase was 47%, in Belgium, 60%; in Denmark, 38%, and in the Netherlands by 26%. There were more than 5.5 million,jobless in the EEC area. The fig- ures would have been higher if immigrant workers had been counted. The hundreds of thousands of Turkish, Greek, Spanish and Portu- guese workers in such countries as West Germany have been affect- ed by rulings which prevent foreigners from ge‘ting jobs before nationals of the country. EEC agricultural production was badly damaged by last year’s unusual weather: the wheat crop was cut by 15% and the potato harvest by 19%. Northern France, Britain and Ireland suffered grave losses because of the extreme dryness, the worst in a century. But other EEC. areas suffered because of too much rain, at the wrong times, which flooded crops and interfered with harvesting. SAIGON — At South Vietnam's state-owned Vicasa steel mill just north of this city, tens of thousands of tons of scrap metal left by the American war machine are being recast. More than 100 tons of construction steel are produced daily. PACIFIC TRIBUNE—FEBRUARY 13, 1976—Page 5