WORLD

General strike hits Uruguay

MONTEVIDEO —Ninty per cent of Uruguay’s workers launched a

_ general strike Jan. 18 demanding amnesty for political prisoners, lifting

the ban on political parties and for better wages. The military regime

which took power 10 years ago responded by banning the labor con-
federation which called the strike.

Amnesty for Malesela Moloise

UNITED NATIONS — The UN Security Council Jan. 13 un-
animously passed a resolution calling on the South African government
not to carry out the execution of patriot Malesela Benjamin Moloise
sentenced to death for his opposition to the apartheid regime.

" Junta brought to justice

BUENOS AIRES — Nine generals and admirals, including three
former presidents are among those facing trial for homicide and torture
carried out during the “dirty war” during which thousands of civilians
were murdered, tortured and disappeared. The new government of
president Bignone also began uncovering hundreds of unmarked
graves in which the former juntas victims were buried.

rd

Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo.

‘Reduce tensions’ socialist

BERLIN — The continuation of the Helsinki
Conference on Security and Peace was the centre of
world attention as it met in Stockholm this week. In
socialist capitals it was seen as providing European
governments — plus the USA and Canada — with
an opportunity to turn the world away from con-
frontation and to undo the harm done by the station-
ing of new first-strike nuclear missiles in Britain,
Italy and the FRG. :

The conference provided the socialist countries
with a platform from which once again to expound
their ideas on how Europe and the world can set
their course on peace. It also gave other European
countries a chance to express their peoples’ desire
for coexistence and the banning of war.

U.S. Secretary of Stafe George Shultz, ran true to
form in a speech described by the newspaper Neues
Deutschland as “‘demagogic and contradictory”’.
His speech was notable for the fact that it held
stubbornly to the thesis that the West must act from
a position of strength, and also hinted at the need to
change Europe’s borders.

At Tribune press time, Western representatives
who supported disarmament and some form of co-
existence included Swedish Prime Minister Olaf
Palme, French Foreign Minister Claude Cheysson,
Portuguese Foreign Minister Jaime Gama and
others.

Oskar Fischer, Foreign Minister of the German
Democratic Republic, told the conference that the
GDR would work at the meeting to reduce con-
frontation and to bring order once more into the
political relations between states.

Fischer presented the conference with a summary
of proposals which, in the view of the GDR, are the
most important, because they are the most urgent
for maintaining peace. His summary included: ‘‘The

States urge at Stockholm

From Berlin
Fils Delisle

renunciation, incorporated in international law, of
the first use of nuclear weapons by the nuclear
powers who have not yet accepted this duty;

‘‘An agreement on the renunciation of the use of
military force and on the maintenance of peaceful
relations between the states of the Warsaw Pact and
NATO, with the drawing in of interested neutral and
pact-free countries;

“The creating of nuclear weapons free zones or
corridors in various parts of Europe;

“The removal of chemical weapons from Europe; -

“The freezing and reduction of the military
budgets of all participating states; °

‘The further development and expansion of the
measures creating mutual trust as contained in the
Final Act of the Helsinki Conference, with the aim
of reducing the military activities of the states and
the danger of a surprise attack.”

Foreign Minister Fischer ridiculed attempts in the
West to convince the world that nothing had
changed with the year-end installation of new nuc-
lear missiles in western Europe. The deployment of
the new first-strike weapons has led to a new situa-
tion which is more dangerous and more com-
plicated, said Fischer. For new negotiations on nuc-
lear missiles, the Pershing and Cruise missiles’
would have to be removed from Europe and the
situation returned to what it had been previously.

Czechoslovak Foreign Minister Bohuslav
Choupnek supported this view, declaring that the
majority in the countries involved did not want the
missiles.

International Focus

Tom Morris

Ronald Reagan
can stop them

U.S. ambassador to Hon-
duras John Negroponte told

the press the U.S. helicopter -

shot down by Sandinista bor-
der troops Jan. 11 was not in
any way involved in helping
the contras in their attacks

helicopter on a routine flight
which was forced down in
Honduras and that the Nica-
raguans opened fire on it ac-
ross the border.

They can’t even get their
story straight.

Official Nicaraguan sources
describe the incident: On Jan.
11 an unidentified helicopter

against Nicaragua. entered Nicaraguan airspace at
a U.S. Secretary of State 7:50 hours in the Cerro Nubar-
George Shultz called the inci- _ rones_ sector flying over a
i } dent “‘unacceptable”’ and Rea- town, a Sandinista army unit
7 gan Called the pilot’s death ‘‘a and along a highway linking the
great tragedy’. towns of Jalapa and Teote-
1 The first official version by _cacinte.

the Honduran government said
the craft was a UH-1H heli-
copter of the Honduras air-
force. The second version
from Washington by Pentagon
spokesman Col. Robert Obrien
said it was a U.S. army OH-58

Nicaraguan troops opened
fire and the craft crash landed
across the border 200 meters
inside Honduras. The pilot was
killed, two other U.S. soldiers
escaped uninjured.

The Sandinista version is

Downed U.S. army helicopter with salvage craft overhead. Neither

one has identification markings as the U.S. intensifies its war

against Nicaragua.

_ backed by two Honduran sol-

diers who witnessed the inci-
dent. ‘‘It came straight at us
from inside Nicaragua... it
was in trouble and just made it
across to Honduras,”
one. ‘‘When the gringos ar-
rived they fell out of the chop-
per and one looked dead,”’ said
the other.

The U.S. helicopter, in fact, .

was assigned to enlarge a con-
tra base on the border, accord-
ing to Time magazine. It was
part of ‘“‘Operation Big Pine’’,
the joint U.S.-Honduran mili-

tary exercises underway’

involving 5,000 U.S. troops.
Reagan may find the incident
atragedy and Shultz may find it
unacceptable. What is clear is
that U.S. troops operating
against Nicaragua will en-
counter more such tragedies.
Reagan can stop them by
simply picking up the phone.

‘Good cop,
badcop...’

After calling the Soviet
Union ‘‘an evil empire’’, after
ramming through an unpre-
cedented arms program, after
deploying new rockets in
Western Europe,
plummeting East-West re-
lations to an all-time low,
Reagan takes to the air calling
for a new dialogue ‘based on
strength’’.

Small wonder the Soviet re-
sponse to Reagan’s Jan. 15

said.

after .

speech was to call it ‘‘election
year propaganda’’.

In fact, the Soviet reaction
to the ‘‘good cop’’ speech was
similar to that of many Ameri-
cans. Time magazine said the
White House ‘‘hopes to rob the
Democrats of the war-and-
peace issue’’ and writes that

. Reagan’s advisers seek to

“sooth the jitters’’ of Ameri-
cans who have grown anxious
over Reagan’s hard line.

The other aim, something
U.S. politicians call ‘‘strok-
ing’’, is to reassure Washing-
ton’s West European allies
that the president hasn’t com-
pletely lost touch with reality.

The Jan. 15 ‘“‘peace speech”
did not contain one single
proposal for peace. Worse, it

was coupled with a report

submitted by the White House
to Congress charging the
USSR with violating arms con-
trol agreements (see story on
Page 5) and precedes next
month’s request by Reagan for
approval of a $25-billion **Star
Wars’’ package to introduce
high-tech weapons into space.

‘‘America’s deterrence is
making the world a safer
place,’ Reagan tells the
Soviets and the rest of us. By
that logic everyone concerned
with ‘“‘peace’’, every nation,
every alliance should double
and triple their military spend-

We should cut nuclear
warhead delivery time from six

minutes to three or even one.
We should put all our young
people in uniform, build civil
defence systems, grab our
share of space, the new fron-
tier of technological warfare.

We should stop negotia-
tions, forget disarmament, jail
peace marchers, disband the
United Nations. We should put
every scientist to work build-
ing chemical and _ biological

.- weapons.

Only then, according to the
Reagan Doctrine, after we’re
able to guarantee complete,
final, everlasting death for
every living thing on this
planet, will we ‘‘make the
world a safer place’’.

REAGAN ... ‘America’s deterr-
ence is making the world a
safer place.” —

PACIFIC TRIBUNE, JANUARY 25, 1984 e 9