WORLD

35th GDR anniversary
marked by optimism

By FILS DELISLE
Tribune Berlin Correspon-

BERLIN — The people of
the GDR celebrated the 35th
anniversary of their socialist
republic Oct. 7 on a note of
optimism for their country’s
continuing progress. At the
same time meetings and festi-
vals all over the country
warned of the conspiracy
against peace organized by the
U.S. Reagan administration
and some of Washington’s al-
lies abroad.

Erich Honecker, State
Council Chairman and General
Secretary of the Socialist
Unity Party, told a large meet-
ing at the People’s Palace that
in three and a half decades the
GDR has gone through a
remarkable development.
Shattered physically in the
war, it had now reached a stage
where its people were guaran-
teed further steady progress,
assured employment, ed-

ucational opportunities and a
good standard of living that
keeps rising from year to year.
The program of the GDR was
social progress and work for
peace. ‘
Present at the anniversary
celebrations were delegations
from 67 countries. The Com-
munist Party of Canada was
represented by Val Bjarnason,
a member of the party’s Cen-
tral Executive, and Gerry Van

Houten, a member of its cent-

ral committee.

The Soviet delegation was
headed by Andrei Gromyko,
First Deputy Prime Minister
and Foreign Minister of the
USSR. Emphasizing the joint
foreign policy of the socialist
countries, collectively arrived
at, Gromyko said the GDR was
making a worthy contribution
to the cause of peace.

He said the U.S. and its al-
lies were responsible for the
steep rise in armaments. If the

USA is really prepared to show
an interest in solving acute cur-
rent problems, Gromyko con-
tinued, the Soviet Union
would react positively. ““‘We
are ready for an honest, ser-
ious dialogue. We are ready to
work with everybody who st-
rives to diminish the danger of
war.”

The fraternity that has been
a characteristic of the GDR
and the USSR in their mutual
relations was once again em-
phasized by the signing of a
pact between them, during
Gromyko’s visit, covering
mutual trade and other re-
lations until the year 2000.

The anniversary day ended
with a torch procession of
300,000 young people in the
streets of Berlin. The city
echoed to pledges of support
for the socialist GDR and its
efforts for peace that were
shouted by the 300,000 in a
single sustained roar.

Be li

io, er Ap)
proc esl
Pegs ratte!

Tae

PHOTO — ADN-ZB

The struggle to safeguard worl

d peace was forefront at the GDR’s

-S

35th anniversary Oct. 7. Photo: Berlin peace rally 1983.

Honecker summed up the
significance of the anniversary
with the declaration that the
socialist GDR was the most
important achievement in the
history of the German working
class. ‘‘What other German
state,’ he asked, ‘‘could claim
for itself the things that distin-
guish the German Democratic
Republic? Not national arro-
gance, not destructive German

~self-importance are the basis of

the actions of the GDR, but
creative collaboration in the
family of socialist nations.”
Honecker warned that ‘‘more
weapons, Whether on earth or
in space, do not bring more
security”.

The national day opened
with a military parade which
was viewed by hundreds of
thousands of people.

All signs point to U.S.

intervention in Nicaragua

It is growing increasingly apparent that something
dramatic may be about to happen in Central America.

Nicaragua’s leader, Daniel Ortega, recently charged
at the U.N. that the United States is planning to invade
his country, “‘perhaps as early as mid-October.’’ Cuban
statements have been even more emphatic. Cuban
spokesmen say that if Reagan is re-elected, he intends to
wage *‘total war”’ against revolution in Central America
and the Caribbean basin.

Unfortunately, a number of recent developments
— that there is more than a little substance to these

ears.

e Late last month, with barely a ripple of media com-
ment, the Reagan administration laid in place its casus
belli for the invasion of Nicaragua. On the television
program, Meet the Press, Vice President George Bush
announced that Nicaragua’s intention to acquire a mod-
ern air force constitutes ‘‘a direct threat to the security of
the United States’’, and that the United States *“‘cannot
tolerate and will not permit’? Nicaragua to complete and
put into operation the Punta Heute airfield with its
‘10,000 foot runway”’ designed to accommodate jet
fighter aircraft. ~

If all this has a depressingly familiar ring to it, it is
because a similar propaganda pretext was used to justify
the U.S. invasion of Grenada one year ago.

Nicaragua, which has had no air force to speak of, has
suffered for more than two years from contra bombing
and helicopter gunship attacks, as well as regular — and
arrogant — U.S. violations of its airspace. Now, fed-up,
the Sandinistas are taking steps to end all that.

Typically, the reaction of the Pentagon, and profes-
sional media alarmists, has been shrill. They claim that
Nicaragua is about to receive ‘‘front-line Soviet
fighters’ to be flown by ‘‘Bulgarian-trained pilots’.
This, they say, will give Nicaragua ‘‘regional superior-
ity’’ and ‘“‘threaten the security of the Western Hemi-
sphere.”

The facts hardly warrant this. Nicaragua has said that
it will receive two squadrons of MiG 17’s and possibly
one further squadron of MiG 21’s. The MiG 17 was the
USSR’s front-line fighter plane of the early 1950's; the
MiG 21 was phased out of service with the Soviet Air
Force during the late 1960’s. These aircraft will be useful
in defending the integrity of Nicaraguan airspace, but itis
impossible to see them as a threat to the region, much
less the United States. The most powerful airforce in
Central America remains that of Honduras, greatly
beefed-up in recent years by massive deliveries of mod-
ern American equipment.

e The diplomatic crisis in Central America has come
to a head, and there is now every evidence that the
United States is ready to abandon even the pretence of

10 e PACIFIC TRIBUNE, OCTOBER 17, 1984

PHOTO — BARRICADA

negotiated settlement, and:go over to military action.

Late last month, Nicaragua announced its acceptance
‘in totality and without modification’’ of the draft reg-
ional nonaggression treaty prepared for Central America
by the four nations of the Contadora group.

Almost immediately, the Reagan administration —
which has paid lip-service to the Contadora peace pro-
cess — began to undercut it. Spokesmen for the admin-
istration declared that Sandinista behaviour was “‘very,
very tricky’, and dismissed the Contadora treaty as
“full of loopholes’’.

More ominously, U.S. client states, El Salvador and
Honduras, have also begun to back-off from the Con-
tadora peace process at the very moment when it prom-
ises to achieve success. All of this suggests that what-

ever ‘“‘solutions’’ the U.S. has in mind for Central ©

America, they do not at this point involve negotiations or
peace treaties.

As one Sandinista official aptly remarked, “*It seems
as though, short of committing collective suicide, there is
nothing Nicaragua can do to please the U.S.”

e Nicaragua’s national elections, announced last
February and scheduled for November 4, have come

“There are less than 40,000 followers of the Nicaraguary
Democratic Coordinating Committee, the right wing sec-
tors which Washington claims constitute the only ‘valid’

opposition to the FSNL,” comments the Sandinista news- .

paper Barricada. “This barely approaches the Committee

_of Mothers of Heroes and Martyrs in size. This committee

represents mothers of more than 57,000 Nicaraguans kill-

ed by Somocistas both before and after the Revolution’s
triumph in 1979.” Photo: Mothers holding up pictures of
martyred family members.

News
Analysis

Fred Weir

under increasing attack from the Reagan administratio
and its think-alikes among Nicaragua’s right-wing
position parties. The U.S. is demanding that the ele
tions be postponed until next January because the oppa
ition has had ‘‘insufficient time to prepare’’ and becaus
‘‘violations of human rights’’ in Nicaragua have made
fair elections impossible. .
One is forced to recall that this is the same Reagg
administration which last spring sang paeons of p
for the electoral sham in its own client state of El
vador. Only right-wing parties took part in that electia
because during the past four years military death squ
have systematically exterminated all left-of-center 9)
position: by conservative estimates, some 30,000 tra
unionists, peasant leaders, and left-wing cadres ha\
been slaughtered. Those who survived are those who
took to the hills and joined the guerrillas. q
In Nicaragua, by contrast, a full political spect
from left to right, is freely participating in the electi
This despite the fact that there is a war on, and the
country is under economic blockade. The Sandinistas
have even permitted Arturo Cruz — a man who has
worked openly with the contras — to return from his
‘exile’ in the U.S. to lead the right-wing opposition.
As for “‘human rights violations’’ in Nicaragua,
recent incident has ‘‘deeply disturbed’’ the U.S. State
Department. It happened three weeks ago in the Nicara-
guan town of Boaco, where Arturo Cruz was holding #
rally with some 100 of his supporters. Suddenly, Cruz
claims, a Sandinista ‘‘mob’’ appeared and brutally at
tacked his car, which was parked on a nearby street,
throwing a stone through its windshield. Later, Ci
posed for TIME magazine and wondered in aggrie
tones that were echoed by the Reagan administra
‘*How can we go into an electoral process if this is §
to happen every day?”’
Sandinista spokesmen have proposed a much
credible explanation for the U.S. desire to see Nicara
gua’s election postponed. By holding the electio
Nov. 4, just two days before the U.S. presidential
tion, the Sandinistas have put Reagan in a difficult
if he invades Nicaragua before the elections, he will]
to face electoral consequences at home. If he wai
after, he will stand condemned by the world fo
throwing a democratically-elected government.
- Thus Reagan wants the Sandinistas to solve his pull
relations dilemma for him — by postponing their €
tion! a
The handwriting is upon the wall, and it says t
Nicaraguan and Cuban charges that the U.S. is prepa
for open intervention in Central America are W
founded. Only a mass mobilization of world opinion,
this point, can prevent it. ;

q