FEATURES __ man

Plan was to scuttle peace talks

LONDON — Over two years after Britain’s Prime
Minister Margaret Thatcher triumphantly crowed of vic-
tory in her government’s war against Argentina for pos-
session of the Malvinas (Falklands) Islands, the echoes
of what really happened in that conflict are ringing with
embarrassing persistence in her ears and those of the
nation.

Most embarrassing of the ghostly sounds are the in-
creasing revelations of circumstances surrounding the
war's most notorious episode: the sinking on May 2,
1982, of the Argentine cruiser “‘General Belgrano”’ by the
British nuclear-powered submarine ‘‘Conqueror.’’ Up
to that time the crisis over the South Atlantic island

* group, which had recently been occupied by Argentine

troops in pursuit of an ownership claim lasting over 200
years, had not yet developed into a full-fledged shooting
war, but the loss of the *‘Belgrano’’ along with the lives
of 368 of its crew turned the situation into a bloody
contest of arms.

Worst of all, the sinking of the Argentine cruiser put an
end to third-party interventions to bring about talks
aimed at negotiating a peaceful settlement.

Even while the war was in progress, doubts had been
raised in progressive circles about the propriety of the
Thatcher cabinet order to sink the cruiser. The Thatcher
flag-waving defense was that the Argentine warship had
been steaming toward the convoy of the British naval
task force coming down from the north to re-invade the
Malvinas, and was.a threat to its safety.

This assertion has produced a hollow and embarrass-
ing echo. One by one the facts have emerged to show
that the Thatcher government hid the truth of the events
from the people and from parliament, and that it con-
tinues to do so today.

The ‘‘Belgrano,”’ it has turned out, was outside the
200-mile ‘‘exclusion zone”’ that the British government
had declared around the islands. Any Argentine vessel
or plane entering it, they said, would be sunk or shot
down. More important, the *‘Belgrano’’ was not sailing
toward the British task force when sunk but had reversed
course and was well on its way back to its home port.
Furthermore, the British submarine ‘‘Conqueror’’ had
been stalking the cruiser, knew its movements intimately
and had been reporting these to the British chiefs of staff.
It became plain that the order to sink the ‘‘Belgrano”’

Malvinas war: gov’t lied

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William :-
Pomeroy

was a deliberately provocative act.

Uncovering the truth about the incident has largely
been due to the persistent campaign by a Labor MP,
Tom Dalyell, who has stalked Mrs. Thatcher both in and
outside parliament.

Dalyell has charged that Mrs. Thatcher and the war--

hawks in her cabinet ordered the sinking of the
‘Belgrano’? as the means of torpedoing peace-talk
moves being undertaken by Peru, which looked promis-
-ing, and even negotiating steps being conducted by U.S.
Secretary of State Haig. The claim of Dalyell and others
is that Mrs. Thatcher, whose popularity had been
plummeting prior to the conflict with Argentina, wanted
a military showdown so that a jingoistic fervor could be
whipped up among the British people and her political
fortunes could rise in the blaze of military glory as-
sociated with a victory. This proved to be the case.

A few weeks ago, in July, the widening campaign for
the truth spear-headed by Dalyell began to pick up
strength. Anonymous government employees or civil
servants sent Dalyell confidential Defense Ministry
documents addressed to Defense Secretary Michael
Heseltine urging that ‘‘sensitive information’’ about the
‘‘Belgrano”’ case be withheld from the House of Com-
mons. In particular it was urged that changes made in the
Rules of Engagement: (operating instructions issued to
naval forces during the war) that led to the cruiser’s
sinking should not be made known to parliamentary.
committees.

The obvious implication of this is that the government
and the military authorities have something to hide. Sub-
sequently it was revealed that a senior civil servant in the
Defense Ministry, Clive Ponting, sent the documents to
Dalyell. Ponting is now to be prosecuted under the blan-
ket Official Secrets Act, which conceals vast areas of
information from the public.

Belgrano sinking was illegal evidence shows. 386 paid
with their lives.

However, the door had opened. Published in the Au- |
gust 24th issue:of the weekly magazine New Statesman
were documents obtained also from government sources
showing how the Rules of Engagement had been
changed. On April 30, 1982, while the U.S. Haig-led
peace initiative was under way, orders were issued for
the British nuclear-powered submarine ‘‘Splendid” to
find, attack and sink the aircraft carrier “‘25th of May,”
the flagship of the Argentine fleet. The *‘Splendid”’ tried
to do this, even though the ‘25th of May”’ was within the
12-mile coastal limit of Argentina, but lost it.

On May 2 the order was issued to sink the
‘*Belgrano.”’ However, this was not limited to the
cruiser; the order was to sink all Argentine warships

- wherever located. These orders, which changed the orig-

inal rules that merely warned Argentine vessels out of
the 200-mile exclusion zone, were not to be announced
until five days after issuance, which means that the war-
ships could be sunk without warning in the meantime, as
happened.

Among the New Statesman documelits was a State-|
ment by: the then foreign secretary, Francis Pym, and
Attorney-General Michael Havers, opposing the attack
orders on grounds that they violated international law.
Their opinions were disregarded by Mrs. Thatcher. —

A muzzled press: who would have known?

By JUAN MARRERO

Thomas Jefferson once said that had
he to choose between having a govern-
ment without newspapers or news-
papers without a government he
wouldn’t hesitate one moment in
choosing the latter. President Ronald
Reagan, to judge by the following cable,
is of an entirely opposite mind: ‘*An-
drews Air Force Base, USA, August 19
(AFB) — President Reagan condemned
the press today for having published his
joke of 10 days ago when he announced
the bombing of the Soviet Union.

“It’s still funny ... but if the press
had kept quiet, no one would have
known what I said,”’ the U.S. president
told the journalists accompanying him
on his Mississippi election tour.

Journalists questioned him about the
criticism leveled by his Democratic ri-
val, Walter Mondale, who charged
Reagan with having instilled fear in the
whole world.

Once again, Reagan’s retrograde
philosophy on the role of the press in
U.S. society was laid bare. He shame-
lessly advocated press silence so that
nobody would know what his ad-
ministration was doing and saying. It
isn’t enough for truth to be manipulated
and distorted; he wants more, he wants
absolute silence, a sort of self-muzzled
press.

We can readily understand how
elated Reagan would have been if over
the past 44 months no one or just a very
few in the U.S. had heard about the
countless stupid or outrageous things
he has said and done.

Had the press kept quiet:

No one would have found out he or-
dered the CIA to mine Nicaraguan
ports, as well as arm and train the
Somocista bands in Honduras trying to
destabilize the Nicaraguan revolution-
ary process.

No one would have ever found out
about the dirty, traitorous, and criminal
nature of the U.S. invasion of tiny
Grenada or the lies he uttered as a pre-
text for landing the elite military forces
of the U.S. that captured and now oc-
cupy the Caribbean island.

No one would have ever found out
the extent to which the U.S. has be-

come involved in the Central American
conflict through the assistance it is pro-
viding to the genocidal Salvadoran
army and the establishment of many

military bases in Honduras.

How wonderfully amusing it would
have been for Reagan if the U.S. press,
apart from its known limitations in what
concerns a genuine freedom of the
press, hadn’t written a word about all
the above!

Had the press kept quiet about the
stationing of additional U.S. nuclear
missiles in Europe and their ominous
consequences, or the unchecked arms
race, or the plans to militarize outer

ADMINISTRATION WILL DO EVERY-
THING HUMANELY POSSIBLE TOTHWART COUNTRIES BETWEEN MEXICO
MARXIST EXPANSIONISM IN CENTRAL ASIA

LET ME REASSURE THE AMERICAN UMM NO... MEAN SOUTH DAKOTA
PEOPLE AND THE WORLD THAT THIS + AHHNO.. THAT SHOULD BE...

OH YoU KNOW// .. THOSE
AND COLOGNE!

frequently involving corrupt cronies, |

space, Reagan would be laughing all |
day long, totally unconcerned about —
the demonstrations and protests taking
place in the U.S. to condemn his war-
mongering policy.

Had the press kept quiet, Reagan
wouldn’t have to worry every day
about conflicting domestic affairs, like —
the alarmingly increasing trafficanduse |
of drugs, crime, sexual abuses, un- |
employment, racism and other social
evils that afflict U.S. society. :

How peacefully he would live and
how amused he would be were the
press to stop prying into his dirty affairs |
and keep quiet about the scandals |

including Edwin Meese, his right-hand —
man in the White House. =|
Were the press to keep mum about ~
Reagan’s mental lapses, like confusing
Brazil with Boliva, or about his fond-,
ness for falling asleep during solemn
ceremonies, how happy that woul
make the U.S. president.
The truth is that the contradictions
and conflicts now raging in the U.S
the electoral climate that is propitious
to exposing public scandals of varying
nature, and above all the fear of nuclear
holocaust widely felt in the U.S.,
blocking Reagan’s fascist dreams about
muzzling the press. They are all factors
standing in the way of Reagan’s
dreams, which is why he attacks the
press and regards it as his enemy,
thereby showing he is against the U.S.
Constitution itself. :
This article is reprinted from the Cuban
newspaper Granma.

10 e PACIFIC TRIBUNE, OCTOBER 10, 1984