Castro notches up win for Brezhnev

Scan page 2

Not quite a knock• out-but the old champ Tito was certainly down for the count when the bell rang to open Havana's "non-aligned summit" of over 90 countries.

Fidel Castro bounced around the ring like Mohamed Ali at his most confident.

In what by his standards was an almost monosyllabic keynote address (a mere 1½ hours) Castro revealed that the source of his championship form was not ginseng, anabolic steroids, nor the Koran, but the foreign policy of the Soviet Union "the natural ally of the non-aligned"

Castro punched nimbly away at the imperialists in such a way as to suggest Successful trainer-Brezhnev that "non-aligned" opposition to the Soviet connection would be the same as imperialism itself.

And China was constantly placed in the same boat as the USA.

Castro denounced the Chinese for supporting Chilean Dictator •Pinochet South Africa in Angola, the Shah in Iran and reaction in general.

Ringside

And as if to prove the point, the Chinese observer walked out along with his US counterpart.

It was by all reports a tirade to please most of the ringside-many of whom had of course been wooed for a long time by Cuba's aggressive diplomacy of the last few years.

So it was a tired opponent who stepped into the ring the next day.

The eighty-seven year old Tito managed only thirty minutes of morose but low key insistence that the non-aligned movement should not be dependent on any great power.

Diplomatic

Nyerere of Tanzania put up a more vigorous defence of the anti-Soviet position, but Tito had to recognise that aside from a few minor diplomatic concessions made by the Cubans, this was Castro's conference-a diplomatic and political triumph for the Cuban Stalinist premier and thus also for his backers, the Soviet leadership in Moscow.

Castro sidestepped the most potentially contentious issues by in effect agreeing to postpone them.

This applies to the representation of Kampuchea.

Neither of the two delegations present in Havana (the deposed Pol Pot regime and the puppet Heng Samrin regime) were Castro seated.

And the proposed expulsion of Egypt was shelved for two years.

The Havana Conference has proved the immense importance of Cuba's role as Moscow's winged diplomatic Mercury.

While in complete accord with the Soviet leadership, the Cuban Stalinists are able to intervene in all kinds of situations and countries where a direct Soviet presence would have been more provocative to the imperialists, or more embarassing to a government in a semi-colonial country.

Effective ally.

Since Castro's important defence of the Soviet invasion of Czecheslavakia in 1968, there have been no significantt public foreign policy differences between the leaders in Havana and Moscow.

And especially in Africa and Latin America the two bureaucracies have divided their labour but acted as one.

Castro has been Moscow's most effective ally because, unlike the Eastern European bureaucracies, he has been able to maintain an "independent" and "left" image (helped along by the illsions peddled by such left wing forces as the United Secretariat of the Fourth International, especially the : American SWP.

Carter-another gaff

years.

The USSR has not denied their presence.

And it is equally certain that the US administration has known about them for most of that time.

Carter's decision to use the • knowledge now probably strengthened Castro's position in the non-aligned conference and landed Carter himself in new problems.

US Secretary of State Vance has taken the line that the 3,000 Soviet troops are "not a menace to the security of the United States" but that their presence IS nevertheless "very serious"

Castro and Brezhnev have more or less ignored the US fulminations: but members the US Congress have converted the presence of the troops into a new pretext for not ratifying the SALT 2 nuclear arms control treaty.

SALT 2 A few of them managed to engineer a wave of hysteria which forced Carter onto national TV to say that this was not another 1962 missile crisis and that SALT 2 should be ratified regardless of the troops issue-which was a question to be solved separately.

So Carter's plan to deflate Castro seems to have badly backfired.

But despite its apparent nonchalence, the Kremlin also stands to lose from these developments.

In its anxiety to get SALT 2 ratified it has so far shown strong signs of readiness to adopt the treaty on the lines demanded by the right-wing US senators.

It will be more difficult for the Kremlin bureaucrats now publicly to bow before the demand to withdraw its troops.

So, although Carter and Brezhnev are not exactly eyeball to eyeball, it looks as if they will both have to go through some elaborate posturing if they are to rescue the collaborationist plans embodied in SALT 2.

But if all that is a headache for Brezhnev, his junior colleague in Havana has meanwhile certainly advanced the interests of the international Stalinist partnership in' its global strategy of securing diplomatic footholds in the semi-colonial countries within the framework of "peaceful coexistence" with imperialism and opposition to independent revolutionary struggles by the oppressed masses.