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_WORLD

_ London and Paris silent

France, Britain and West Germany were relieved. In
their View, the near-agreement in Iceland would have
decoupled” the U.S. from its European allies and left
the USSR with an advantage in conventional forces.
€y wanted to maintain a nuclear deterrence although
they agreed with the idea of reducing the number of
Nuclear weapons by 50 per cent.

France, Britain and West Germany also called on the

| USSR to abandon the linkage between an agreement on

Intermediate nuclear forces (INF), such as the SS-20s,
Tulse and Pershing-2 missiles, with an agreement ban-

¢ Ning the testing and deployment of space weapons. In
| Short, the U.S.’s major NATO partners reiterated their

demand for the elimination of all INF weapons — the
So-called ‘‘zero option’’ — which NATO had been de-
Manding since 1981.

_ But when Soviet leader Gorbachev offered to drop the
linkage and accept ‘‘zero option’’, lo and behold some
European NATO responded very coolly.

USSR Plan Welcomed
The vast majority of the people, however, warmly

$ Welcomed the Soviet offer to delink INF from Star Wars.

n West Germany, a Stern magazine poll showed 92 per
Cent public approval of Gorbachev's proposal. France,

ugh, has taken the leadership of those former sup-
Porters of the zero option who are now suddenly against

.: The other main centers of opposition to an INF

‘On meaningful arms control =

agreement are to be found in the British and West Ger-
man governments.

Last January’s federal election in the FRG, however,
have seriously eroded the influence of the ‘‘steel hel-
met’’ faction inside Chancellor Kohl’s government,
while strengthening the hand of Detrich Genscher, his
Foreign Minister. Kohl has, for the time being, accepted
Genscher’s lead on foreign policy and arms control mat-
ters, and Genscher has called on NATO to accept the
sincerity and seriousness of the Soviet INF proposal.

Britain’s Thatcher government is clearly unhappy
with the prospects of an arms control agreement based
on the zero option. But its room to maneuver is severe-
ly restricted by the fact that an election is in the offing.
Thatcher’s problems are made worse by a very strong
peace movement and contradictory polls and by-election
results indicating voters are in a very volatile mood.
Thatcher has not forgotten what happened to Kohl at the
polls and is anxious to appear as mediator between the
U.S. and USSR. On the eve of her first trip to Moscow,
her government has been forced to publicly welcome the
Soviet initiative.

France’s Assignment

The job of undermining the Soviet offer has been left to
France. And although France is also expecting elections
within a year, voters will have a narrow range of choices
on the peace question. President Mitterand’s Socialist
Party and all the right-wing parties, including the one led
by Prime Minister Jacques Chirac, are all agreed in their
demand to link INF to other arms control issues such as
short-range nuclear missiles and conventional arms.
Only the French Communist Party has consistently
backed the zero option.

Although the USSR has repeatedly expressed its will-
ingness to remove the short-range missiles it deployed in
the GDR and Czechoslovakia in response to U.S. de-
ployment of Cruise and Pershing-2 missiles in Western
Europe, France still insists on linkage.

The anti-zero option rhetoric in France has even taken
on extreme proportions. Some cabinet ministers refer to
the possible INF agreement as ‘‘a new Munich’’. Mitter-
and, while avoiding the rhetoric, has called for any INF
agreement to be linked to the removal of other Soviet
short-range missiles. 3

One can rest assured that if the USSR agrees to re-
move its short-range missiles from Europe on the condi-
tion the U.S. does likewise, Paris and other NATO mili-
tarists will then raise the hoary problem of the alleged

i U8 ARR FORCE

ake ges, ‘ . Seal
When the Soviet Union makes a linkage between arms
control issues, NATO demands delinkage. When the

Soviet Union delinks arms control issues, NATO demands
linkage.

imbalance of convention forces which they claim favors
the Warsaw Pact.

It should be recalled in all this talk about removing
short-range missiles along with INF, both Paris and
London have pursued a studied silence about their own
nuclear forces. In essence, the French position boils
down to demanding Soviet unilateral disarmament while
Paris maintains and builds up its force de frappe, a de-
mand the USSR cannot and will not meet. In short, Paris
Opposes meaningful arms control.

Conventional Forces

The ultimate argument advanced by these European
militarists to justify their position is the alleged superior-
ity of Warsaw Pact conventional forces — and here they
resort to lies.

The 1986 report of the Brookings Institute in the U.S.
admits the existence of rough parity between the con-
ventional armed forces of the two alliances. The 1986
report of the London Institute did likewise.

In fact, the Warsaw Pact has 5.8 million men under
arms while NATO has 5.3 million. The West European
militarists keep silent about a fact well-known to them: a
successful military ‘‘invasion’’ would require at least a
two-to-one, if not a three-to-one advantage in men and
equipment for the ‘‘invader’’. Not even the wildest
NATO dreams can come up with 10 million Warsaw Pact
soldiers.

So why do France and Britain oppose any meaningful
arms control agreement, including their long-loved zero
option?

Firstly, and most importantly, both countries have
large, home-grown military-industrial complexes which,
like their U.S. counterpart, gain enormous profits from
the arms race.

Secondly, both countries were once world powers
themselves, but have since declined to second-rate
status. Possession of their own independent nuclear
strike forces is, in their view, the means of maintaining
their status as great imperialist world powers.

But the victims of their dreams of winning back past
glories are arms control and world peace.

pnts en enn gn

| INTERNATIONAL FOCUS Tom Morris

He’s the
real thing

Some months ago, Canada’s
ambassador Stephen
Lewis endeared himself for-
€ver with the Reagan White
‘Ouse and its remaining
friends by leading a vicious at-
“CK against the USSR over its
Support for Afghanistan.
ia Wis’ rhetoric surpassed
€n UN representative Ver-
von Walters in the use of de-
Beave adjectives. The radi-
va Socialist had transformed
© a world-class reactionary
Peaking on a world stage. . .
oo A sort of Canadian Lyn-
Cle Larouche or Eldridge
aver,
pws, then, will be pleased
ttiol i that his anti-Soviet vi-
Ment Ormed the major argu-
tribut im a hate leaflet dis-
Bolte in eepith at a recent
Bhokis of the Red Army
bie ese Peddlers of right-wing
.'mMmediately recognized
Wis’s UN speech as exactly

Lewis: the socialist trans-

formed.

reflecting their views. They
loved it, and quoted extensive-
ly from it in their leaflet. The
speech contained enough mal-
ice even for them.

Stephen has come a long
way from the debating halls of
academia and the chambers of
the Ontario legislature where
he once toiled for social de-
mocracy. Back then many
thought he was a radish social-
ist —a bit to ae and-far

ute to be real.
he's real alright, but no

socialist.

Never enough

for Reagan

‘‘Just how much does Mul-
roney want us to pull his chest-
nuts out of the fire on acid rain?
Wonder how badly the guy
needs a free trade deal? Should

“we give the poor slob some-

thing when Reagan goes up
there in April? What's he got
left he hasn’t already given
away?’’, must be the questions
making the rounds in the White
House.

Having positioned Mul-
roney to stand before the coun-
try with his pants firmly around
his ankles, the Americans are
ready to deal.

Reagan will drive his
‘“friend’’ Brian to the wall de-
manding he smack the pro-
vinces which question his free
trade talks into line. U.S.
negotiator Murphy last week
publicly said as much.

He will demand Canada

boost its military spending. He ©

wants more Canadian troops in
Europe, more hardware

(bought from guess where?)
His shopping list is endless.
Reagan has Mulroney on the
ropes. Having sold his political
soul to Reagan in advance,
he’s now getting a lesson in
U.S. duplicity. American de-
mands increase daily. There’s
not even the pretense of cour-
tesy left. Mulroney now re-
sembles the drug addict caught
in the deadly downward spiral.
They ve got him where they
want him — dancing at the end
of a string, begging for crumbs,
willing to accept any small
face-saver.
That's the price of selling the
farm to this right-wing U.S.
administration. No matter
what Mulroney offers, it won't
be enough. They’re after con-
trol. They demand blind, un-
questioning loyalty in foreign
affairs, subservience in
economic matters and silence
on bilateral questions. That’s
why they like Mulroney and
his Tories.
But there’s still the Cana-
dian people ...

‘A strong
U.S. ally

He was a real whiz.

In the two years Jay Pollard
worked for Mossad, the Israeli
intelligence agency, he stole
enough secret U.S. documents
to create a pile six feet by six
feet, 10 feet high. For this Is-
rael paid Pollard $50,000 —
that’s $5,000 per foot, which
may well be recorded as the
cheapest. wage scale yet in the
world of espionage.

For his efforts, the 32-year-
old Pollard was sentenced to
life imprisonment.

And, to add further insult to
Pollard’s injury, the Israeli
government flatly denied Pol-
lard worked for them, even
through it promoted the two
men who recruited and con-
trolled Pollard. It also turned
out that Pollard would deliver
the documents to the Israeli
embassy in Washington which
promptly photo-copied them
and sent them home.

aterm i