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WORLD

INTERNATIONAL FOCUS Tom Morris

It’s not easy
to own Guccis

If you owned 84 pairs of
Shoes, 50 pairs being Guccis
(which alone cost between
$10,000 — $20,000), and won-
dered where to put your 30

suits — you'd need a big clos-

et, too.

And if your spouse required
nine meters of hanging space
just for her blouses and suits,
you'd begin to appreciate the
crisis at 24 Sussex.

But cavernous closets are
expensive for a public servant
Scraping a living on a Prime
Minister’s wages and perks.

So here’s a chance to be
More understanding when
Brian Mulroney dips into the
PC Party tax-subsidized cen-
tral fund for a mere $308,000
for his modest personal needs.
After all, where do you put
your Guccis?

You can’t simply toss Guccis
under the bed...

Muzzling
Stephen Lewis

Certainly, Canada’s ambas-
sador to the United Natiofis,
Stephen Lewis hasn’t many
fans in this corner.

The eagerness with which he
took hold of his job, changing
his political stripes to blend in

By CINDY HAWES

MEXICO CITY — A for-
mer Costa Rican official accu-
sed the U.S. of “using every
means in its reach” to prevent
the signing of the Contadora
Peace Act between 1985 and
1986.

‘As a witness, I can affirm
that at least during the time I
was vice foreign minister
under (President Louis Alber-
to) Monge (1985-86), Washing-
ton tried in every way it could
to prevent the Contadora
Peace Act from being signed,”
Said ex-Vice Foreign Minister
Gerard Trejos Salas, in an
article scheduled to appear in
the Costa Rican magazine
Fragua. A copy was given to
the Mexican daily Excelsior.

“As a public functionary I
attended at least two meetings
with top officials of the Secur-
ity Council and the State
Department who tried to con-
vince us that we should
assume the position as Hon-
duras and El Salvador,” he
Said,

_ Both these countries, obey-
Ing U.S. dictates, “dedicated
themselves to obstructing the
Negotiating process in the
Contadora meetings,” he said.

Trejos’ version differs from
that of Monge, who has
Tepeatedly denied that the U.S.
tried to pressure Costa Rica
Into opposing the signing of
the peace act.

But diplomats close to Con-
ladora charge that under

Onge, Costa Rica acted in
alliance with the U.S., El Sal-
vador and Honduras to isolate
Nicaragua diplomatically and

U.S. urged Costa

Rica to go to war
against Nicaragua

_to block the Contadora peace

process.

Trejos also said that the
U.S.-supported contras launch-
ed attacks against Nicaragua
from Costa Rica. This hap-
pened despite the fact that “all
countries have the duty to pre-
vent hostile expeditions from
their territory against other
governments,” he said.

Trejos’ statements are not
the first to reveal U.S. pressure
on the Monge government. In
an interview published last
November in Excelsior, Angelo
Edmundo Solano, former Cos-
ta Rican ambassador to Mex-
ico, who served as Minister of
Public Security from 1982 to
1984, said U.S. Ambassador
Curtin Winsor proposed that
Costa Rica initiate a war with
Nicaragua.

“When I was Minister of
Public Security, the U.S. am-
bassador visited me one day to
tell me it was time to ‘cut out
that cancer’ (the Sandinista
government), and that it would
be convenient if Costa Rica
would collaborate,” Solano
said.

“He proposed that Costa
Rica be attacked by members
of an alleged foreign army
who would be disguised (as
Sandinistas). Costa Rica would
then declare it was threatened
and would call on the TIAR,”
the Interamerican Reciprocal
Assistance Treaty, allowing
the U.S. to intervene and
“defend” it. Costa Rica has no
regular armed forces. =

Solano refused to partici-
pate. A vicious slander cam-
paign against the minister
followed, forcing him to resign
as security minister.

with his new Tory jungle home
is a study in instant evolution-
ary prostitution.

This notwithstanding, Lewis
was invited to attend a confer-
ence of physicians for the Pre-
vention of Nuclear War to take
place in Moscow May 28 to
June 1 and had evidently plan-
ned to be there. It would have
been interesting to hear him
explain Canada’s role in world
affairs and Ottawa’s silence on
Gorbachev’s arms proposals.

Lewis might also have
picked up a thing or two from
the physicians to help stiffen
his backbone when it comes to
identifying the threat to peace.

Alas, this is not to be. It
seems External Affairs feels its
policies are so indefensible
even the silver tongued Lewis
couldn’t sell them, and has or-
dered Lewis not to participate
in the meeting.

That’s quite a revelation

from Joe Clark which Stephen
might ponder on.
Concentration

camp Olympics

The more we watch the
zombies who run the prison-
state called South Korea, the
more obvious it becomes why
these people can sell the
Hyundai automobile and
countless other products so
cheaply.

Flooding the world market
with goods produced by cheap
labor is an old game. But South
Korea’s industrialists have
never had life better — they
have married cheap, non-
union labor to modern micro-
chip technology.

Then they’ve taken this
winning combination and pro-
tected it with a fascist govern-
ment which rules by brute

- force and terror — its own 1.5

million-strong army and

120,000-strong police force
backed by 40,000 U.S. troops.

Even this modern capitalist
‘‘miracle’’ wouldn’t be so dif-
ferent from other right-wing
models except for the fact that
somehow, in some strange
fashion, the international
sporting community selected
South Korea as the venue for
the 1988 Summer Olympic
Games.

It should be some show.
Wall-to-wall police; riots, a sea
of camouflage uniforms and a
wall of batons. As the youth of
the world celebrate a festival of
peace, unity and joy, South
Korean youth will be excom-
municated from life lest the
world press hears their cry for
democracy.

It's obscene. No nation
should legitimize this regime of
killers by going to Seoul. They
will be competing in a con-
centration camp.

NATO arms control foes

caught in a real dilemma

Rattled by the Soviet Union’s willingness to take
NATO at its word by accepting the zero option,
Paris, London and the ‘‘steel helmet’’ faction in
Bonn are becoming increasingly alarmed. In fact
they are bordering on panic.

Soviet leader Gorbachev’s latest proposal to
abolish all nuclear missiles in Europe with a range
of 500 to 1,000 kilometers — the so-called zero-
zero option — has highlighted the fact that these
militarists want to prevent any arms control
agreement.

The unhappiness and discomfort of the French
and British governments are well known to regular
Tribune readers. In the last two weeks, Paris and
London have hardened their opposition to the zero
option. This in turn has encouraged the steel hel-
met group within FRG Chancellor Kohl’s own
government to voice their opposition as well.

Because of the strength of the peace sentiment in
the Federal Republic of Germany, confirmed by
mass demonstrations all across the country Easter
weekend, the steel helmet faction has been forced
to be more circumspect than their allies in France
and Britain. They couch their opposition to arms
control in terms of criticizing the zero-zero option.
Publicly, the FRG government supports the zero
option and has called for a speedy agreement which
would remove intermediate-range nuclear missiles
(INF) from Europe.

Yet opposing the zero-zero option virtually
amounts to opposing the zero option. London and
Paris have openly opposed any deal on shorter-
range nuclear missiles. Yet they condition a deal on
INF on the removal of short-range missiles.

To justify their opposition to an agreement on
shorter-range missiles, the Thatcher and Mitter-
rand governments keep raising the issue of alleged
superiority of Soviet conventional forces.

Observers in Europe have noted that the posi-
tion taken by France and Britain, as well as by their
allies within the governments of the FRG and U.S.,
would effectively make a liar out of NATO and
considerably undermine its credibility as a peace
alliance.

The FRG newspaper, Die Zeit, recently com-
plained that ‘every time Gorbachev makes a step
toward us, we take a step back.’’ He offers to
withdraw Euro-strategic missiles and we say:
‘*Yes, but what about short-range missiles?’’ He
offers to negotiate them away as well, and then we
say: ‘‘Then we are sliding down the slope of denu-
clearization,”’ or ‘Then, there is this crushing con-

From Berlin

Gerry
van Houten

ventional superiority.” And if they talk about
conventional disarmament, then we take flight in
(saying it’s) ‘‘all propaganda.”’

Die Zeit pointed out that the alleged superiority
in Soviet conventional forces, much of it outdated,
is being deliberately exaggerated. Worse, some
generals and cabinet ministers are even saying that
the chances of war have actually increased in the
recent period because of moves toward arms
control.

: This view, held in London and Paris, but voiced
in Washington and Bonn, amounts to saying that
=m unlimited arms race will make the world a safer
place.

Throughout this campaign against the zero op-
tion and the zero-zero option, France and Britain
have deliberately downplayed or ignored some
real-life facts: they have more than 300 so-called
‘‘independent’’ medium-range missiles in their
own arsenals. In addition, France and Spain have
never been counted into NATO conventional
forces, claiming “‘independence’’ on the grounds
they are not part of the alliance’s military structure.

Thatcher and her militarist colleagues in France,
the FRG and U.S. have expressed fears of a
“‘denuclearization’’ of Europe, yet ignore the fact
that neither the zero, nor zero-zero options in-
volves their so-called ‘‘independent’’ nuclear
strike forces targetted on the Soviet Union and
Warsaw Pact states. They also ignore the fact that
Europe is surrounded by U.S. warships and sub-
marines carrying nuclear missiles including, of
course, sea-based cruise missiles.

Opponents of the zero option are clearly in a
dilemma. Everything the USSR has said and done
debunks the idea that it is a threat to Europe,
whose people in their majority have welcomed
Gorbachev’s initiatives.

The will and the drive for arms control is grow-
ing stronger, adding to the difficulties for the
military-industrial complex whose huge profits de-
pend on the so-called ‘‘Soviet threat’’, and who
today run the risk of exposing themselves.

PACIFIC TRIBUNE, APRIL 29, 1987 e 21

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