Miracle' intervenes to stop dictators' war tOp

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Occupied

And within a week the ancient temples along with virtually the whole of Kampuchea was occupied by Vietnamese troops in a full-blooded Kremlinbacked invasion.

The Pol Pot government and forces appear to have completely collapsed.

The vice-president, with Chinese diplomats and technical assistants, were ferried out . in Thai helicopters and then put on planes to Peking.

The fate of Pol Pot himself remains unknown. One of the numerous rumours circulating in the last week suggested he was dead, another that he was in Washington!

What now seems almost certain is that the Peking bureaucracy intends to limit its immediate reactions to a serious set-back to verbal indignation and harmless ranting in the United Nations.

Comic opera

In the first days of the invasion the Peking regime seized some disputed islands close to Vietnam and since then it has reportedly massed its troops on the border.

But the main theatre of its activity has shifted 12,000 miles away to the UN Security Council in New York, the world centre of political comic opera.

There the Chinese Stalinist bureaucrats. with their long-time protegee, the now hysterical Prince Sihanouk,, have been exploiting their growing alliance with the imperialists to inflict some public diplomatic defeats on the Russian Stalinist bureaucrats.

Debate

China proposed Security Council debate on the "unprovoked aggression" of the Vietnamese, in which Sihanouk could speak for the Cambodian regime which a week before had , released him from detention. representative of the Kampuchean United Front for National Salvation could arrive.

This, too, was rejected by the China-US-Britain axis and left the spluttering Soviet diplomats with a'veto of any resolution as their only, and somewhat humiliating, way out.

• Transparent The tactic of the imperialists is transparent. They voted for the contest to take place and then stood back to let the workers' states draw blood from each other.

But the self-interest of these two parasitic bureaucracies comes before the defence of the historic gains of the working class against imperialism.

The Kremlin must be fairly confident that it has been successful in extending its political influence in South-East Asia at the expense of Peking and making a decisive response to the recent cementing of ties between China and the The Romanian Stalinist bureaucracy has come out against the invasion of Kampuchea by the pro-Moscow : Vietnamese-in line with its recent opposition to Moscow on a number of other issues relating to the independence of the Stalinist bureaucracies from the Kremlin leadership.

Hua dancing in Rumania In mid-December one of the many bizarre rumours circulating in Buenos Aires was that train loads of empty coffins were being sent to the southern part of the country.

They were presumed to be for the dead of what was then the expected war between the Argentinian and Chilean military dictatorships.

Last week both sides signed a declaration committing themselves to settling the issue peacefully.

What is the issue? It revolves around the two, countries' rival claims to the possession of three small islands in the Beagle channel which separates the South American mainland from Tierra del Guego.

The islands are of no importance in themselves but they would be used as a benchmark for the division of territorial waters between the countries.

exploration That division, incidentaliy, decides where the Atlantic Ocean ends and the Pacific begins. It is not that abstract issue, of course, which has nearly caused war, but the consequences of the division for oil exploration and fishing rights.

It could have led to Argentina being forced to pass through Chilean waters to get access to one of its important naval bases.

About a year ago, an international arbitration panel headed by the British Queen, awarded the islands to Chile.

This was widely suspected of being a reaction to Argentina's claim to the British colony of the Falkland Islands, and it was rejected by the Videla junta in Argentina.

Videla, however, got the implicit support of Carter and US imperialism, as a result of the worsening diplomatic relations between Pinochet's regime in Chile and the Carter administration.

Pinochet's main ally in the dispute has been the "communist" regime in: Peking which has grown in warmth towards the butcher of the Chilean labour movement ever since he seized power in the coup of 1973.

The Argentinians have also pleaded the justice of their cause with the Peking bureaucracy, but to no avail.

Peking sees Argentina as being firmly in the camp of Moscow.

An enormous amount of its trade is now done with COMECON countries and both the Kremlin, bureaucracy and the Argentinian CP has supported Videla's bloody antiVidela working class dictatorship since the day it seized power in 1976.

But it is not only into Buckingham Palace, the White House, the Kremlin and the Forbidden City that the Beagle crisis has intruded, but also more recently into the even more holy place of the Basilica of St. Peter's.

After the almost complete breakdown of bilateral negotiations between the dictators in mid-December, and the mobil isation and deployment for war of the two armies, God-or at least 'his elected official on Earth-arrived in the nick of time.

Pope John Paul II, as part of his rapidly increasing political involvement, sent his nuncio to mediate between the catholic military tyrants.

Like a divine Kissinger, the Cardinal • shuttled between: Buenos Aires and Santiago until he had devised a compiex formula, on which both sides could at least agree to negotiate, and which involves some horse-trading of islands, • an Argentinian maritime "corridor" to its naval base, and new basis for demarking territorial water in which the disputed island would no longer be a reference point.

When hair splitting is involved, call in an expert!

This dispute is far from settled but the possibility of war has clearly receded.

Catholic newspapers hailed a "political miracle". The truth is more prosaic. Both sides were on the look out for avoiding war without losing face.

A war would have brought the grave danger of intensifying the internal political challenges against the two hated dictators.

The menace of war, however was a different matter. Both generals were using the crisis to strengthen their own fragile political positions. Both of them were being subject to increasing opposition from members of their own junta.

But rumours of both Videla's and Pinochet's imminent replacement have been at least temporarily scotched by the war scare and the safe deliverance.

They have also tried to use the crisis to stifle more widespread oppositions through the propagation of national fervour. Pinochet has been netogiating for support from the Christian Democrats, some of whom have been flirting with the Stalinist-dominated Popular Unity.

It doesn't seem that much has yet come out of these talks. Videla, however, has been more successful.

Fake "revolutionaries"

Without even asking for it, he was given the support of the "revolutionary" Peronist guerrilla group, the Montoneros.

One of the Montoneros' leaders said in London at the end of last year that in the event of a war between Argentina and Chile they would support Videla.

So these fake "revolutionaries" come out in their true bourgeois nationalist colours.

There can be 'only one revolutionary position towards these two military dictatorships, which have both tried to physically destroy the leadership of the working class-the independent mobilisation of the working class for the complete overthrow of the dictatorships.

Main obstacle

And in a war, that position would take the form of revolship's war effort by the working class.

It is the bourgeois nationalist reformist and Stalinist leaders in Argentina and Chile which are the main obstacles to the mass adoption of this. revolutionary policy.

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The Lynch government was years ago-the oppression of the hasty to condemn the IRA Irish people by m British bombing campaign prior to imperialism.

to cover its tracks by striking a established by the British verbally "anti-British" note, oppressors-let alone one set up while steering well clear of any in the confines of the artificial Lynch knows full well that can be acceptable to the Irish The self styled "nationalist' Fianna Fail government in the trish 'Free State' has stepped up its efforts to protect British imperialist occupation of the Six Counties.

Recent weeks have seen repeated statements by both Prime Minister Jack Lynch and AnL ANSACTION COU

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utionary defeatism and the out- right sabotage of the dictator-