DISARMAMENT EAR seeks meeting with PM on cruise — End the Arms Race, the two-year old organization Tesponsible for the thousands-strong 1982 and 1983 Walk for Peace events in Vancouver, has asked the prime Minister and the cabinet to meet with peace activists on the Issue of cruise missile testing and the prime minister’s re- Cent “open letter’? on the subject. In a telegram May 11 and a confirming letter May 12 leaders asked prime minister Pierre Trudeau to meet 4 nationally based delegation of students, labor and church representatives, “We ask for a meeting before the signing of any agree- Ment with the United States to test cruise missiles and before the end of the present parliamentary session,’ stated the telegram from EAR vice-president Lois Boyce. Copies of the request were also sent to Vancouver senators Ray Perrault and Jack Austen, the Liberal cabinet, the MPs on the standing committee on external affairs and national defence, Opposition leader Erik Nielsen, federal NDP leader Ed Broadbent and the heads of various branches of the federal Liberal Party. EAR will also be contacting other peace groups across the country requesting their participation in the delega- tion. If Trudeau accepts — and with the growing peace sentiment in Canada, the pressure is on for him to do so — the meeting will provide the peace movement with highest route since the peace marches across the country Apr. EAR’s member organizations total 131 groups, which contributed towards the estimated 80,000 to 100,000 who marched for peace last month, and who also affirmed with massive applause at the rally the ‘‘Vancouver Declaration for Peace.’’ It calls for no cruise testing and a nuclear- weapons-freeze-zone policy for Canada, president Frank Kennedy noted. A meeting between Trudeau and the peace forces would “clarify our position,”’ said Boyce. Kennedy asked the prime minister to treat the request ‘‘as a matter of con- siderable urgency and we look forward to your early reply.” Western press ignored Continued from page 1 t : : a be developed in which agreements (on cae can be reached. We look for- O futur i : Peace,» e exchanges in the pursuit of Speier’s statement was not reported. oe were also some roadblocks thrown Bae federal department of immigration a Tefused to grant a visa to one delega- Oh saalalied , V. F. Dvinin, the editor-in- a Or state broadcasting in the USSR. jaa was the only French-speaking the der Of the delegation and, asa result of tel Visa denial, interviews with Quebec €vision had to be cancelled. : Best, the executive director for the im- : 8ration department refused to state the “asons for the denial. nother delegation member, Rimm apiloy, the secretary of the Moscow Trade , lon Committee, was initially told by im- ingration that he would not be allowed to vel west of. Toronto. Permission was later Santed but the delay in obtaining it forced tO miss the public meeting in Vancouver Onday night. thocsPite the problems, however, . Benes of people were able to get a glimp- a the peace movement that has 120 local neg zations around the USSR including sion Beubs among physicians and profes- Sand last year mobilized 60 million . wets in rallies and demonstrations for the Use Of disarmament. - Romodanov and Khodareva address- hoteracked public meeting at the Plaza 500 nin Monday night following an early mor- a Press conference and lunch and supper .~lNgs with church representatives and disar m awe : ftisas ament activists from Vancouver ane Tuesday, the delegation was also and ss Officially by Vancouver city council Dr urnaby municipal council. That night, Physi ©modanov spoke to a meeting of the Koc for Social Responsibility while able ae and Papilov, who was finally 0 travel to Vancouver, addressed ates to the Vancouver and District T Council who gave the Soviet Peace t On ttee representatives a standing ova- deleg It 1S Only through meetings such as this know alogue between us that we can get to Unde One another and promote mutual More qading and peace,” Khodareva told than 700 people jammed into the main ‘oom of the Plaza 500 hotel Monday. disry cre were some 20 hecklers who Breer. the meeting briefly by hoisting Mhamee et banners, but the over- Clear Ing majority of the audience had find Ycome to hear the Soviets’ views and to UssR whether the peace movement in the Shares many of the same goals as ¢ activists in Canada. field ter nearly two hours in which the two h a Scores of searching and occasionally € questions, it was apparent that the just es of disarmament is understood, not y thousands, but by millions of people x 4 Soviet Union. dreq tt has been demonstrated in the hun- Of rallies and demonstrations held in Soviet peace marches’ the Soviet Union last year around the United Nations special session on disarmament, Khodaravea told the meeting. “There were some 20,000 rallies across the country and, in total, about 60 million people took part,’’ she said. But scant atten- tion was paid to them in Canadian news reports. ‘ “Tn all of those demonstrations, our slogan was: ‘No to nuclear weapons in the east and the west; No to nuclear weapons anywhere in the world’ ”’, she emphasized, pointing to the banners in one of several photos the delegation brought with it. Also last summer, thousands of Soviet Peace Committee members took part in the historic Stockholm-Moscow-Minsk peace march. And although that event was covered in European and North American news reports, another international march that began in Moscow and the proceeded to Kiev before dividing in two. streams;“to: cross Hungary and Czechoslovakia, to Vienna, was largely ignored. The Soviet Peace Committee, itself has received little attention in this country except for the often repeated claim that it is not in- dependent of the Soviet government, a claim which the two representatives challenged on several occasions throughout their tour. “The Soviet Peace Committee is a volun- tary organization,” Romodanov reminded reporters at Monday’s press conference. ‘There are more than 120 local organiza- tions throughout the Soviet Union and all of them are financed by the Soviet Peace Fund,”’ he emphasized. Although the Peace Committee has been in existence since 1949, the Peace Fund did not come into being until the 1950s. And when it was formally established, it had already received considerable funds from thousands of donors who gratuitously sent in donations to the peace committee in response to the cold war tension, then begin- ning to mount ominously. ‘““Eyen now, the more tense the interna- tional situation, the more active are donors to the peace fund,”’ said Romodanov, who has himself just donated the proceeds froma recent book on neurosurgery to the Peace Fund. ; . “As to Soviet government subsidies, there are none, absolutely none,’’ he said. But the positions of the Soviet Peace Committee do have a significant impact on Soviet government policy, Romodanov em- phasized. The committee first took up the demand for a nuclear freeze, advanced by the US. freeze movement, and promoted it throughout the Soviet Union. And at the UN, the freeze demand was ' formally endorsed by the Soviet represen- tative, he said. For the two Soviet peace leaders, the con- trast has a bitter irony. Their movement responded positively to an initiative of the U.S. peace movement and won government acceptance for it — but the Reagan ad- ministration continues to reject a nuclear freeze, in fact denouncing it as a Kremlin ploy. And it is on the basis of the response of governments to demands raised by the peace TRIBUNE PHOTO—SEAN GRIFFIN Aelita Khodareva (r) shows reporters photographs of mass peace demonstrations in the USSR last summer in which more than 60 million took part. With her is Dr. Andrei Romodanov (I) and interpreter Dmitri Agrachev. : movement that any movement must deter- mine its relation with government, Khodareva stressed, replying to questions about the independence of the Soviet Peace Committee. The Soviet government’s peace policy has closely followed that of the peace’ commit- tee, she said, citing the recent Soviet pledge not to be the first to use nuclear weapons and the moratorium on the deployment of SS-20 medium range missiles as examples of that policy. Both were urged by the Soviet Peace Committee. “If our government responded favorably to your demands, would you oppose your government’s stand?”’ she asked the crowd, to applause. Nor is support of government positions unique to the Soviet peace movement, she added. In both Sweden and Finland, the peace movement has supported the govern- ment on its disarmament initiatives, specifically on the calls for the creation of nuclear weapons free zones. But the peace policies of the Soviet Union are rooted in the social system, Khodareva said, emphasizing that priorities in the economy ‘‘are very different in our country where the means of production are owned by the state. “Certainly, there is not a single person in Soviet society who would profit from military production. There are no benefits, either to managers or to workers.”’ On the contrary, she emphasized, ‘“‘military production is a great drain on the economy. “But in the United States,” she added, “military production is the domain of big corporations who profit from that produc- tion.”’ There were other questions the Soviets touched on during their two-day stay. @ On the.“‘dissident’” peace movement: “Often we know about members of this movement only through reports in the west. But we do know that one of their better known people, Oleg Popov, who went to Britain, was quoted in the press attacking the British Campaign for Nuclear Disarma- “ment.”’ @ On Soviet civil defence: ‘‘We have heard of no money being spent on Soviet civil defence. We do not believe that there is any defence against nuclear war. It would mean the destruction of the world. The only defence is prevention.” There were even moments of comic relief among the scores of questions. One person asked how Canadians could know if those - taking part in the Soviet peace demonstra- tions were doing so of their own accord. Khodareva replied with her own question: ‘How can we know if you are taking part in this meeting voluntarily?’’ The point was made. The crush of people coming to the front at Monday’s meeting to shake the Soviets’ hands indicated that there are common bonds between the peace movements of the two countries, bonds which, Khodareva noted, have already been established among peace movements in Britain, the USSR, West Germany, Finland and elsewhere. “The unity of the peace movement around the world is very important,” she told delegates to the Vancouver Labor Council Tuesday. ‘‘We must get together for the danger of war is very, very great.” Carmela Allevato, former president of the B.C, Peace Council which organized the meeting for the Soviets, had earlier urged the meeting audience to ‘‘commit themselves to peace here tonight. “We cannot achieve it alone,’’ she said. se will take people all over the earth to do a 8 PACIFIC TRIBUNE—MAY 20, 1983—Page 3