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!)

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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