'Hold vour fire' warns US envoy

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The US State Departin El Salvador, has once again warned the local oligarchy not to engage in tion"

Ambassador Robert White, embarrassed by the publicity gained by the assassination of Archbishop Romero and the continuing frictions in the imperialist apparatus ('hawks' and 'doves') over how to retain control of this tiny devastated country, recently openly accused the San Salvador Chamber of Commerce of funding and organising right wing terror squads.

It was a risky move but clearly necessary if the veil of reformism' was to have any credibility in masking expanding US intervention.

The •move appears to confirm the decision taken in Washington that in order to hold El Salvador within the imperialist orbit it is necessary to ditch the '14 families' of the oligarchy and deepen the alliance between the military and the sector of the bourgeoisie that is directly linked with multinational capital.

This was certainly the impression gained by the affronted capitalists as they trooped out of the meeting with White:

"Next the USA will just send in the marines to kill anyone in a 3-piece suit" , remarked one.

Another was slightly more perspicacious:

"Like many others, I paid to have my workers propagandised against the lies of the left, and I gave money I suspected would go for guns.

And yes, I think a few of us paid to have evil men killed. The USA can rightly blame us for X and Y but not for the whole alphabet."

, Such touching candour does, of course, contain an element of truth, but the imperialists are not in the business of shouldering moral responsibilities.

The interest of revolutionaries in this lies only in assessing the shift in class forces and the strategy of capital, which has slaughtered 2,000 Salvadoreans in the first three months of the yeat.

White's action has not put paid to the other tactics under way to eradicate the left.

The growing link between the Salvadorean and Guatemalan armies in elaborating a coordinated strategy for intervention was confirmed last week when a Guatemalan transport plane crashed on an 'internal' flight and several members of the Salvadorean general staff were found amongst the dead.

, Equally, the Honduran role in this 'Holy Alliance of Powers' has become clearer, with the confession twenty 'Somocista' guerrillas, captured in Nicaragua that they had been trained by the Hondurans as part of an extensive plan to establish right-wing terror groups in 'trouble spots'. • In El Salvador itself the killings continue-another 20 peasants were killed in the 'agrarian reform' last week-and the apparent lull in events after the general strike that followed Romero's assassination is clearly one that precedes the storm.

The leftist guerrillas, particularly the FPL, have resumed operations in the countryside, executing several well-known members of the right-wing ORDEN, and launching successful attack on an army unit which apparently shook the US Embassy because it involved the use of: heavy callibre weapons and evidenced military skills of which they were previously thought incapable.

This, however, is not the declaration of open war-for the left still lacks the capacity for an all out military challenge to the army and will continue to do so until it receives aid from Nicaragua, Cuba: and the workers states which have so far failed in this elementary international task.

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JUSTPRESS ice tri In the face of mounting world economic recession and soaring prices, the dyn-

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ment, mindful of the dangers of precipitate action

independent terrorist action that threatens the imperial-