[- IN Timor, Portugal's smallest colony, is now…]

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- IN Timor, Portugal's smallest colony, is now the scene of bitter armed conflict between rival political groups. As happened in Mozambique and Angola, the decision of the Portuguese army to withdraw from the colony has created a political vacuum which the right wing UDT (Democratic Union of Timor) tried to fill three weeks ago through a coup d'etat. The coup led to the outbreak of civil war between the right wing and the procommunist Fretilin movement.

The success of the Fretilin soldiers is causing such great concern in capitalist circles that from spreading rumours about communists beating babies to death, governments in the area are now threatening to intervene directly in the civil war.

The two countries showing the greatest interest in the situation are Indonesia and Australia. The Australians are supporting renewed Portuguese military intervention in the colony in order to forestall a likely attempt by Indonesia to take over the colony in the next few weeks.

"Humanitarian"

Whilst Suharto of Indonesia talks of intervening on humanitarian grounds it is not widely believed that he has the interests of the inhabitants. at heart. Suharto's interest in the colony is twofold. Firstly, the colony is of sutficent strategic impostance to Indonesia for Suharto to consider spending an estimated S15 million a year and face the possibility of a guerilla war, in order to gain control of the country. communist government of Indonesia is concerned that the successes o the left-wing Fretilin troops may stir up latent pro-communist sym pathies in Indonesia itself, where a mass communist party existed until it was physically liquidated in the 1960s.

The Australian Labour government of Gough Whitlam was not originally opposed to the incorporation. Timor into Indonesia. However, the opposition to such a plan inside Timor itselt, supported as it was by the left wing in Whitlam's own party has forced him to think again, hence his support for a new attempt to "restore order' by the Portuguese army.

The right of the timor people to self determination must be de fended against the imperialist plans of the surrounding capitalist nations. tually secured only through the intervention of the Indian army acting equally in the interests of the power politics of the Indian bourgeoisie: to weaken Pakistan generally.

POPULAR Thus despite initial popular support around the question of the ending of rule from Karachi, the Muhjib regime in no way based itself on the workers and peasants of Bangladesh. Despite token nationalisations Muhjib carried through no programme of wholesale nationalisation of industry. His policy was at all costs to avoid dispossession of the landlords and the collectivisation of agriculture in the context of a socialist economic plan and the State monopoly of foreign trade.

Such a programme is the only basis for launching a fight against the effects of imperialism and the