EDITORI.

Formula for

Soviet leader Konstantin Chernenko has made the
U.S. a crisp, clear disarmament offer. What is holding
the U.S. back from showing that it sides with humani-
ty’s millions-strong majority and is prepared to opt for
peace?

One may prefer capitalism to socialism but surely
there are very few who prefer nuclear annihilation to
human survival and human progress.

If the Soviet Union were demanding commitments
from the U.S. that it was not prepared to submit to
itself, of course, it would not then be taken seriously.
But exactly the reverse is so.

Chernenko mentioned four areas where “positive”
steps by the Reagan regime could break the impasse
and usher in peace talks in the interest of the entire
planet.

The USSR is prepared to open talks “with a view to
working out and concluding an agreement to prevent
the militarization of outer space, including complete
renunciation of anti-satellite systems, with a mutual
moratorium to be established from the date of the
beginning of the talks on testing and deployment of
space weapons.”

The vast majority of the earth’s people have no desire
for, and nothing to gain from, filling space with deadly
weapons of mass destruction. Only warped militarists
can conceive of this as desirable.

peace talks

On the second point, the USSR again asks nothing of
the U.S. it is not prepared to undertake itself: an agree-
ment to freeze the nuclear arsenals of both the U.S. and
the USSR. Is there an atmosphere more conducive to
seeking ways to peace than when niether side is increas-
ing armaments?

Chernenko’s third point was to urge the U.S. to at
last ratify the ‘“Soviet-American treaties on under-
ground nuclear explosions” signed in 1974 and 1976.

Finally, the Soviet leader asked the U.S. to do what
the USSR has already done unilaterally, assume an
obligation not to be the first to use nuclear weapons.

Equality is the very essence of these proposals. Rea-
gan can only refuse them at the cost of exposing his
preference to risk war to attain military domination,
and world hegeniony.

The Reagan regime likes to use the pretext that Soviet
sincerity can only be measured by its willingness to
resume talks on medium range missiles.

But how can the two sides talk about preventing
what the U.S. began doing a year ago — deploying
Pershing HI and cruise missiles in western Europe?

Chernenko’s four-point proposal, on the other hand,
requires only that the U.S. accept the same restrictions
as the USSR — and put world peace and human exist-
ence ahead of military domination. :

After the Peace Caravan

October 20 was shaping up asa very important day in
Canadian peace efforts. Marches and rallies were
planned for several centres across the country, the cara-
vans begun at the east and west coasts were to meet in
Ottawa, and there, public figures were slated to read
some of the well over 300,000 names of those who
signed the petition of the Peace Petition Caravan Cam-
paign (P2C2) over the past several months.

Whatever the weather, whatever turnout, with wha-
tever degree of statesmanship the government responds
to the request to present the signatures to the prime
minister — the tasks of the peace forces do not cease.

The question on the minds of countless peace
workers across the country who have devoted hours
and days of hard work to the peace petition caravan, is,
what now?

Few who have gone this far are willing to leave it to
Mulroney and his close friend, Reagan.

The people of Canada want government action,

government deeds, which contribute to peace — not
arms escalation.

Furthermore they want to know where the upper
echelons of labor stand. Summer soldiers for a cause, in
this case summer peace partisans, are not enough.
Organized labor, specifically the Canadian Labor Con-
gress was expressing a long-term desire of its affiliates
and members when it backed P2C2.

Now the need is to advance that struggle in other
forms.

The Peace Petition Caravan Campaign has achieved
its own results, as have country-wide peace petition
campaigns before it. But nuclear war has not yet been
averted, and as arduous as the work has been, with only
time to catch one’s breath, the struggle must go on, until
governments are compelled to accept the propositions
the people are fighting for.

A world at peace rather than in pieces is worth the
effort.

7

DISARMAMENT NOW!)

Drawing by Liza Chvoshevskaya, aged 14, from Leningrad

xd Profiteer of the week

Abitibi-Price Inc., Toronto, with a big piece of the newsprint, fine

paper and related industries, also holds vast timber, water power
and mineral rights, With after-tax profits for the nine months ended
Sept. 30 of $48,699,000, it registered a 11 3 percent profit jump over
that period in 1983.

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Summit advances buy outof poor nations |

Some estimates place the total foreign debts of
developing nations at as much as $840 billion. Few of the
20 leading debtor countries are able to keep up interest
payments, let alone payments on the principal.

The debt burden, aggravated today by the Reagan
administration’s boosting of interest rates, ‘has devas-
tated the development programs of these countries.
These programs were supposed to be financed through
loans from the World Bank, the International Monetary
Fund (IMF), western governments and a host of private
banks. Instead, for a long time loan capital has simply
been used for making debt and interest payments rather
than for development.

Severe cutbacks on industrialization projects has
taken place in Brazil, Nigeria, Indonesia and numerous
other large countries that had been viewed as models or
key areas of development. In the Philippines, now stand-
ing sixth in the list of debtor nations with $26 billion
owed, the Marcos government in the past year has can-
celled virtually all of 11 major industrial projects that
were supposed to accelerate shifting the economy to a
heavy industrial base by the year 2000.

Loans Pay Interest

The blow has fallen heavily on the public sector of the
economies in the debtor countries, into which the bulk of
loans had been channeled in many cases. This was never
to the liking of the imperialist lending powers. The IMF
and World Bank had labored ceaselessly to impose terms
on loans that would restrict the public spending and
public sector investment by developing countries.

As they drag out debt negotiations and keep the stric-
ken countries on the hook of crisis, the imperialist pow-

Commentary} at

William Pomeroy

=

ers are scheming to take advantage of the ‘‘third world”
plight to enlarge their neo-colonial system.

One of the main items on the agenda of the London
economic summit meeting of seven leading western
powers in June was “‘managing international debt.”’
These discussions centred on ‘‘encouraging”’ the flow of
long-term private equity financing for short-term loans.

Britain’s Margaret Thatcher in an interview with the:

London Times on June 9 said, ‘‘Many potential foreign
investors would be interested in taking an equity stake in
the substantial natural and industrial resources of debtor
countries, and it would be helpful if there were inter-
national agreement on investment protection.”

Multinational Takeovers

In other words, debts could be pared down or repay-
ment postponed, even written off, if the debtor countries
would permit the multinational corporations to come in
and take over a big share of natural resources and indus-
tries.

The governor of the Bank of England had broached
the idea last February to a foreign bankers’ dinner in
London. He told them, ‘‘Developing countries should
make more vigorous efforts to attract direct foreign

investment to alleviate their burden of commercial bank
debt.”

He admitted, ‘‘Developing countries had often wor-
ried that the promotion of inward investment would lead
to a loss of domestic control over national resources,”
but poohpoohed this as unrealistic because the same
countries had now found that ‘‘excessive bank borrow-
ing’’ had forced them to submit to IMF austerity terms
that embodied loss of control anyway. Besides, said the

Governor, ‘‘Foreign investments could also bring an_

influx of technical and managerial skills.”

The idea is being pushed that because debtor coun-
tries are not in a position to absorb any more loans and
because this means stagnation and retrogression and

growing poverty and unrest, the only other source of —

development capital is from foreign private investment,

especially in the existing resource and production are

affected by the debt crisis. : \
Said a London Times study of World Bank-IMF think-

ing, ‘The colonial era should now be sufficiently a thing

of the past for 50-50 foreign ownership to be uncon-
troversial, with outside investors in combination either
with local private investors or the state. The World

Bank’s thinking, prodded by the U.S., is moving rapidly —

in the direction of operating with private investors.”

It will:take some determined stands by developing —

country leaders to fend off this latest neo-colonial drive
by the imperialist powers and their agencies. In that
struggle they would have the support of the masses of
their people who would suffer worse poverty if such

imperialist schemes that would further loot their eco-

nomies are forced on them.

4 e PACIFIC TRIBUNE, OCTOBER 24, 1984