Muslims fight Taraki

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Berlinguer's treacherous class collaborationist policies which have kept reactionary Christian Democratic governments in office since 1974, a Stalinist abstention is now most unlikely.

Further blows have now been suffered: deputy Premier Ugo La Malfa has died and a major furore has erupted over the arrest of a top manager of the Bank of Italy.

A whole group of his leading colleagues have now threatened to restan en bloc unless proceedings against deputy director general Mario Sarcinelli (over irregular loans) are dropped.

The results seem certain to confirm the intractability and depth of that crisis.

But they will happen nonetheless-because at present the Italian bourgeoisie have run out of alternatives which would avoid them.

The revolution in Iran has brought new hope to the oppressed masses throughout the Middle East.

But in neighbouring Afghanistan, its main influence so far has been to strengthen reactionary forces.

Inspired by the example of Khomeini's religious leadership, backward Muslim tribes have risen in an attempt to establish an "Islamic republic" by overthrowing the left' bourgeois nationalist regime of Nur Mohammed Taraki.

Fighting in the eastern regions of Paktia and Kunar has grown steadily more serious, and drawn verbal fire from Taraki's sponsors--the Soviet In its first breath of criticism since reaching an accommodation with Khomeini and Bazargan, the Kremlin leaders have claimed : unconvincingly that 6,000 troops of the Iranian army have been sent intc Afghanistan to assist the rebellion.

They have gone on to cite the Peking bureaucracy and the military dictatorship in Pakistan as major supporters of this threat to their latest clientstate.