Struggle against

By WILLIAM J. POMEROY

A tour by Portugal’s new
prime minister, Marcello Caeta-
no, of the Portuguese African
colonies of Guinea Bissau, An-
gola and Mozambique in the
latter part of April marks inten-
sified efforts to suppress the
liberation struggles there. Not
only is Portugal throwing more
of its resources into its colonial
wars, but it is drawing on great-
er aid from the U.S., Britain and
South Africa. ~~ he

When Caetano replaced the
ailing dictator, Salazar, last Sep-
tember, he was given a build-up
in the western press as a more
“liberal” leader. As NATO’s fas-
cist partner, Portugal needed
such beauty treatment particu-
larly since the other imperialist
powers are relying on it heavily
to block African liberation.

Last October, Caetano called
for a full-scale conference on
the colonial wars in Africa,
which occupy nearly 200,000
Portuguese troops and account
for almost all of the military
Costs that absorb 40 percent of
the nation’s budget (approxim-
ately $250 million born by a
country of only nine million
people).

Britain’s Financial Times said
at the time: “The meetings now
taking place can broadly be
compared with the strategic en-
counters held in Honolulu by
President Johnson and his Viet-
nam commanders.”

They were attended by all top
army leaders and by the gov-
ernors-general of Guinea, Ango-
la and Mozambique.

One of the first fruits of these
meetings, the decisions of which
were not made public, was the
murder .on February 3 of Dr.
Eduardo Mondlane, president of

By JOHN MOSS

Porton CS gas was among the
weapons carried by paratroops
and police in Britain’s occu-
pation of peaceful Anguilla.

This riot-control agent is part
of the armory of the newly form-
ed special police commando
squad, led in its first action by
portly and moustached Assistant
Commissioner Andrew Way of
Scotland Yard.

CS, said (by Lord Shepherd
for the Government in a recent
Lords debate) to be the safest
anti-riot gas yet developed, has
been supplied to half Britain’s
police forces and is widely used
by the Americans in Vietnam.

Its use there and its issue to
police all over the world repre-
sents a step on the ladder of
escalation in the use of chemical
and biological weapons.

It is part of a move to get
people used to the idea of pos-
session and inevitable use of CB
weapons.

The Americans have develop-
ed an enormous armory of such
weapons, ranging from harassing
gases of the CS type, to plague
and other deadly _ biological
agents. :

They are waging chemical war

‘in Vietnam, first by defoliation

of forests, of crops on a scale
that is likely to have a long-term
effect on that country’s ecology
and secondly, by the use of CS

and other, PPE pan, aangiay - port it, but it does not

O35

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—MAY 23; 1969_Page 8

— Portugal sharper

the Mozambique Liberation
Front (FRELIMO). Dr. Mond-
lane was killed at at his desk in
Dar-es-Salaam by a time-bomb
contained in a mailed parcel ds-
guised as a gift-wrapped book.

On April 2, as a prelude to the
colonial tour of Caetano, a
splurge of publicity was given
to the surrender in Mozambique
‘of Lazaro Cavandame, a chief
of the Makonde tribe in
Cabo Delgado province, where
FRELIMO maintains liberated
areas. Cavandame’s surrender
was officially proclaimed by
Portuguese authorities as Sig-
nalling the end of FRELIMO’s
armed struggle.

The Cavandame incident was
quickly clarified by FRELIMO’s
spokesmen. Cavandame had
once been head of a small na-
tionalist movement in Cabo Del-
gado that had been absorbed
into FRELIMO in 1961. In the
course of the guerrilla war new
younger elements that were not
part of the system of conserva-
tive tribal elders and chiefs came
into leadership of FRELIMO.
This was resented by Cavanda-
me. When the big FRELIMO con-
gress took place last July, he
refused to attend. and tried to
set up his own movement. How-
ever, the Cabo Delgado political
and military leaders unanimous-
ly supported FRELIMO and
Mondlane, and in January Cav-
andame was dimissed from his
FRELIMO positions.

The Caetano regime’s deter-
mination to press the colonial
wars was given further airing in
a speech of Portugal’s Foreign
Minister Nogueira on the eve of
Caetano’s tour. Using the oc-
casion of NATO’s 20th anniver-
sary, Nogueira called for more
assistance from NATO, and de-

The Ministry of Defence has
claimed that there is no proved
case of death arising directly
from the use of CS.

But Cpl. Bowtell of the Aus-
tralian Army died after it had
been introduced in a Vietnam
tunnel, although he had his gas-
mask on. CS has been blown into
such tunnels by the Americans
using a fan called Mighty Mite
and then NLF suspects emerging
have been shot and killed.

This is lethal use of what is
possibly a non-lethal gas under
other circumstances.

The Geneva Protocol of 1925
is unique in banning a certain
group of weapons, and states:
“The use in war of asphyxiating,
poisonous or other gases and of
all analagous liquids, materials
or devices has been justly con-
demned by the general opinion
of the civilized world, and...

“The High Contracting Parties,
so far as they are not already
Parties to Treaties prohibiting
such use, accept this prohibition,
agree to extend this prohibition
to the use of bacteriological
methods of warfare and agree to
be bound as between themselves
according to the terms of this
Declaration.”

The Americans’ attitude to the

Geneva Protocol, which they
never: ratified, is two-faced. On

y ‘in

the one hand, they say they sup- J ica’s, Hidden Arsenal.” “It _ cluding many Nobel Prize win-
Sn PR MOR gs uaa any

During the. fiv

clared: “To think that we defend
successfully the North Atlantic
while ignoring the security of
the South Atlantic is to blunder
politically and strategically.”
(Both Guinea Bissau and Ango-
la have shores on the South
Atlantic.)

While the Caetano tour was
in preparation,- the Portuguese
Defense Minister paid a visit to
South Africa, where he an-
nounced that ‘Portugal, toge-
ther with Angola and Mozam-
bique, can unite with the South
African Republic in building up
a force capable of safeguarding
peace in that part of Africa.”
The South African government
was then in the course of dis-
cussing its arms expenditures
(which have risen from 6.6 to 17
percent of the budget in the past
eight years) and a few days later

Vietnam because they are not
Officially at war there. On the
other hand, their army field
manual denies that they are a
party to any treaty restricting
the use of CB agents in war.

Expenditure on CB warfare
in America is considerable, cen-
tred on Fort Detrick, where
there are 700 qualified person-
nel, and extends to other major
arsenals.

The main British centres are
on Porton Down, the. Chemical
Defense Experimental Establish-
ment with an annual budget of
£1,600,000, and the Microbio-
logical Research Establishment
spending £900,000, all said to be
for defense.

Thirteen service officers are
stationed at Porton and there are
standardization agreements with
NATO countries, including
America and West Germany.

CDEE has 27 research con-
tracts in British universities and
MRE has five. None is specifical-
ly classified, although the uni-
versities agree to consult the
Defense Ministry before publica-
tion. This could be refused “in
the national interest.”

The most serious charge made
against Porton is that by Ameri-
can journalist Seymour Hersh,
who recently published ‘“Chemi-
cal and Biological Warfare:

e ow

e years of struggle in Portuguese Gu in
tory has been liberated by the troops of the independence movement. Above is market day a
when a member of the command of the army takes the opportunity to discuss with the Pine
armed troops and the population are closely connected in the struggle for the liberation ©

announced the spending of $2.5
billion on ‘defense’ over the
next five years.

Caetano, in an address to the
Angolan Legislative Council in
Luanda on April 15, declared
that Angola was “open to for-
eign capital, new schemes and
know-how.”

The U.S., Britain and West
Germany are being urged to ex-
pand their stake in the colony.
In Cabinda, an enclave just north
of Angola, the American Gulf
Oil Co. has a $125 million in-
vestment which is expected to
supply oil to the entire imperial-
ist bastion in southern Africa,
especially South Africa’s needs.

Krupp of West Germany

heads an international consor-
tium pouring $100 million into
Angolan iron ore development.

The British National Export

said. Porton shares results with
the Americans and thus aids
their CBW activities. . :
CBW research in the U.S. at-
tracts scientists of lower calibre,

- claims Hersh, but MRE is recog-

nized as a centre of excellence
that pioneers work that the U.S.
then takes over.

Britain is linked with the
U.S., Canada and Australia in a
four-Power agreement for the
exchange of scientific informa-
tion. This gives Britain and the
U.S. access to the 1,000-square-
mile Canadian proving ground
at Suffield, near Medicine Hat.

The agreement meant that
America could take over the Bri-
tish rediscovery of CS after the
last war, and that the U.S. was
given British manufacturing in-
formation about V-agents (nerve
gases) through the Ministry of
Supply in 1960.

The U.S. Journal of General
Microbiology has published an
article on co-operation between
Porton and Fort Detrick scien-
tists on plague bacillus. Geoffrey
Bacon, an MRE experimental of-
ficer, died of plague in Salisbury

. General Hospital in 1962.

Protests of Porton activities
have grown, in Parliament,
among the public and peace or-
ganizations with sit-ins at the
gates, and among scientists in-

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had previously been tiv
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ing an investment of :
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CDEE in June. sa 0 | o9
The issues have Dé nfor™® | Hy

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tion has become availab jentis® | hg
sition to CBW among Soin fac’
has been one of the ™ «she
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developments could be ¥
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the population generally. gud? | om

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the following demands: ent’

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thening of the Geneva pr Ig

e End the quadripartite 4 and S
ment with the U.S., Canada ys ai
Australia, under which os yl
is supplied with details O 247 | th

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