Italy - Cp Back Police

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Prime Minister to Patrice Lumumba and exiled in the Soviet Union in the 1960's, now claims to lead another guerrilla army of the "Democratic forces for the liberation of the Congo" (FODELICO) in the eastern province of -Kiva (the area around former Stanleyville). politicians based majority in the electorate.

They are alarmed that before very long the obvious lack of enthusiasm by Nkomo and his ilk for a serious liberation war may lead to their removal.

With Angola and Mozambique now in the hands of pro-Soviet nationalist governments, and the CIA-installed and fuelled Mobutu regime in Zaire under threat, the grip of imperialism in Southern Africa is seriously threatened.

This is why Carter last week asked Congress to agree a $100 million Zimbabwe Development Fund, one of the main purposes of which will be to sweeten the attitudes of the white colonial elite to black majority rule.

Similar calculations underlie the approval of South African Premier Vorster (with whom Owen discussed his proposals before taking them to Salisbury) for the plan, and the reaction of lan Smith himself, who compared it favourably at the weekend with the abortive Geneva talks.

And for the same reasons the Zimbabwe Patriotic Front have roiced some opposition, especially Drer l'S sosponsorship of the "The killing of the policeman Settimio Passamonti is new, barbaric evidence of the point of extremism which has been reached by subversive, armed gangs and organisations in their attack on every form of civil stability"

A proclamation from the extreme right wing? No, an official communique from the Secretariat of the Italian Communist Party on Thursday last week, following armed fighting between police and left-wing students in and • around Rome University.

Firearms first came into the struggles on the campuses six weeks ago. Police shot dead a left-wing student on a demonstration Bologna Red belt, whose entire a city at the centre of administration has for decades been controlled by the Communist The role of the Stalinist leadership, in seeking to shift the blame for bloodshed away from the attacks by gangs of heavily-armed policemen onto the shoulders of students who will not accept massive cutbacks in education and employment, is a criminal one.

It forms part and parcel of their policy for the 'historic compromise a full-blooded coalition with the Christian Democrats, whose minority government is only kept in office by Communist Party abstentions in parliament.

The Stalinists' lies also directly assist the government's attacks on the democratic rights they are so anxious to 'defend' Calling for the 'unity' of all 'anti-fascists', the CP leadership backed to the hilt Interior Minister Cossiga's announcement that all public demonstrations in Rome are and his new orders to the police, allowing them to use their guns much more readily.

As everyone knows, Italy's police forces (virtually all equipped with firearms) are riddled-more than any European state apart from Spain-with fascists and their supporters.

In the last few years dozens of workers, students and left wingers have died as a direct consequence of police violence, without a single culprit being brought to justice.

The police forces, together with the notorious paramilitary 'carabineri' and the intelligence services, have been the hatching-ground of a series of right-wing plots aimed at establishing the sort of Junta which the CIA imposed on Greece.

The national, reformist road to socialism' put foward by the Stalinists and social democrats in Italy is a death-trap for the working class.

They already lace nuge cuts in their living standards as the trade union leaders negotiate sacrifice after sacrifice from wage packets and social services to meet the conditions for a $500 million IMF loan to Andreotti's Christian Democratic government.

Workers now also face police violence on a massive scale, backed by the approval of their own leaders.

The lethal political role of the Communist Party during last week brings to the fore even more sharply the importance of revolutionary policies to meet the crisisfor a sliding scale of wages and benefits, democratically decided by workers to match inflation.

And, to prevent violence and right-wing murders in broad daylight, workers' militias based on the trades unions, with the disbandment of the standing army and the Zaire aids FNLA (whose leader is married to the sister of one of Mobutu's wives) in Angola civil war. 1976 New diplomatic and economic agreements with Africa. Mobutu's personal wealth estimated at $50 million.