TRUST PROPERTY CONTROL ACT 57 OF 1988

The purpose of the Trust Properties Control Act is to regulate further the control of trust property; and to provide for matters connected therewith.

Source: SABINET

A HAITIAN PRIEST IS OUSTED BY ORDER

A Roman Catholic priest who has been one of the most outspoken critics of social injustice in Haiti has been expelled from his ecclesiastic order and accused of using religion to incite hatred and violence.
In a statement prepared in Rome, the Salesian order, one of the largest groups in the church, accused the Rev. Jean-Bertrand Aristide, a 35-year-old Haitian priest, of desecrating the sacraments by using them for political purposes.

Father Aristide, who preached on a need for a ''real revolution'' in Haiti and alluded to armed warfare as a means of ending military domination of the country, had refused an order by Salesian officials to leave Haiti by Oct. 17 and take up duties in Canada.

The priest, who has been seen in public only once since narrowly escaping death in early September in an attack on his church in Port-au-Prince, the Haitian capital, has been in contact with Haitian radio stations by telephone, but has expressed no reaction to his expulsion. No Public Response From Avril
The expulsion order came as the Government of Lieut. Gen. Prosper Avril began its third month in office at a time of rising disappointment over its slow progress in moving the country toward democracy.

For several days in October, thousand of Haitians protested the efforts to transfer Father Aristide to Canada. But there has been no public reaction since the expulsion was first reported on Haitian radio stations on Thursday. There has also been no comment from either General Avril or the Haitian Conference of Bishops. Both have been criticized by Father Aristide.

In a statement in November on Radio Metropole, an independent station, Father Aristide accused several bishops of plotting against him. He said the Avril Government was incompetent and guilty of failing to curtail violence by right-wing thugs known as Tontons Macoute.

Shortly after General Avril, an adviser and confidant to the dictators who ruled Haiti for nearly 30 years, assumed power in a coup in September, he said he wanted to go down in history as a leader who had ''saved the country from anarchy and dictatorship'' and had established ''an irreversible democracy.'' Washington Is 'Still Encouraged'

Though no date has been set for elections, United States officials in Haiti say that they are ''still encouraged'' by the things General Avril ''has been doing and saying'' and that they feel he is making progress toward democracy.

The Haitian Government said Friday that the last comments and suggestions by political and civic leaders on a proposal by General Avril to form a body to conduct elections would be accepted Thursday and that a public meeting to discuss the plan would be held in early January.
Many Haitian political leaders have expressed concern that General Avril is trying to limit the independence of the electoral body But have praised him for fostering debate on the plan.
In recent statements, General Avril has reaffirmed a pledge to respect human rights. But he has been criticized by some religious and civic leaders for jailing a group of noncommissioned officers who he asserts tried to overthrow him in mid-October.

There have been continued reports of unrest within the armed forces and new rumors of a coup circulated this week as the retirement and transfer of a half dozen key noncommissioned officers was announced.

Source: New York Times

Gunmen in Haiti Kill 3 In Attack on a Church

Gunmen burst into the church of a radical Roman Catholic priest during Mass today, shot and killed at least three parishioners, wounded 60 and and burned the building down, Radio Haiti-Inter reported.

A foreign journalist attending the Mass telephoned The Associated Press in New York and said the Rev. Jean-Bertrand Aristide had just begun 9 A.M. Mass when a group of men began throwing rocks at the church, panicking 600 to 800 parishioners, who rushed for the doors. ''Suddenly the doors at the back of the church burst open and 20 to 30 men with machetes, huge sticks and guns came in,'' said the journalist, who spoke on condition of anonymity. ''They started shooting people, beating them, and stabbing and slashing them.''

The journalist said at least five parishioners were wounded by bullets or stabbed and at least three were killed. The reporter said parishioners surrounded and protected Father Aristide, who was not injured.
The priest heads the Catholic Church's radical wing, which opposes military rule. There have been several attempts on his life by people widely believed to be connected to elements in the army loyal to the deposed Duvalier dictatorship.

Source: New York Times

Address to the Nation: Hussein bin Talal

Recognizing the desirability of supporting the Palestinians in their struggle for independence, on July 28, 1988, King Hussein announced the cessation of a $1.3 billion development program for the West Bank, explaining that the measure was designed to allow the PLO more responsibility for the area. Two days later, he formally dissolved Parliament, ending West Bank representation in the legislature. Finally, on July 31 he announced the severance of all administrative and legal ties—with the exception of guardianship over the Muslim Holy Sites of Jerusalem—with the occupied West Bank.

This severance of ties allowed Jordan’s electoral law to be changed, redrawing the map to include only East Bank districts. Disengagement therefore marks the turning point that launched the current democratic process, and began a new stage in Jordan’s relationship with the Palestinians.

Source: The Royal Hashemite Court

Death in Detention

According to the South African Police, Maisha "Stanza" Bopape, General secretary of the Mamelodi Civic Organisation, was arrested in Hillbrow on June 9, 1988 and "disappeared".

His death at John Vorster Square came to light only at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in March 1997, when 10 security policemen applied for amnesty for his death. Five said they had been involved in his torture, three said they had covered up the reasons for his death and two said they had disposed of his body. It was never found.

Source: Sunday Times Heritage Project

White Foe of Pretoria Injured by a Car Bomb in Mozambique

A prominent intellectual in the outlawed African National Congress was seriously wounded early today by a car bomb outside his home in Mozambique. The wounded man, Albie L. Sachs, a 52-year-old legal scholar and author, was among the first whites to join the Congress in its fight against the Pretoria Government, and was a key figure in the group's recent efforts to draft constitutional guidelines for a South Africa without racial barriers.

A report from the official Mozambican press agency said the explosion occurred as Mr. Sachs tried to unlock the door of his car in central Maputo, the capital. The force of the blast reportedly shattered every window in the block and damaged the nearby Portuguese Embassy.

Mr. Sachs, who was conscious, was rushed to a hospital, where his shattered right arm was amputated, according to Congress officials. They said he was expected to live. Ideologue for the Congress Spokesmen for the guerrilla group and for the Mozambican press agency blamed South Africa for the attack, which occurred a week after the assassination of the Congress's chief Paris representative, Dulcie September.

The South African Foreign Minister, Roelof F. Botha, denied that his Government had any connection to either attack, and hinted that the attack on Mr. Sachs was the result of internal disputes in the guerrilla group.

Mr. Sachs, who went to Mozambique after the Marxist revolution that overthrew the Portuguese colonialists in 1976, has never been a full-time Congress official but has played an important role in its revolutionary thinking. As a university professor and an employee of the Mozambique Ministry of Justice, Mr. Sachs was one of the few Congress officials allowed to remain in Maputo after a 1984 agreement with South Africa in which Mozambique promised to expel Congress members.

The attack on Mr. Sachs bore strong similarities to a bombing in Maputo in 1982, when Ruth First, a leading anti-apartheid campaigner and Congress member, was killed by a parcel bomb in her office at Eduardo Mondlane University. Like Mr. Sachs, Miss First was an early foe of apartheid and a member of the outlawed South African Communist Party. Mr. Sachs has since left the Communist Party.

A witness to today's bombing, Jacinto Sitoe, said Mr. Sachs left his apartment dressed in a T-shirt and shorts and appeared to be on the way to the beach. Today was a public holiday in Mozambique. Mr. Sitoe said the blast left a hole 12 inches deep and 35 inches wide in the tarred road.

Born in Cape Town, Mr. Sachs is the son of a prominent Communist trade-union organizer, E. S. (Solly) Sachs. Albie Sachs was one of 20 whites to join the Congress movement's nationwide defiance campaign in 1952. He was briefly arrested for entering the black entrance of a post office, but the charges were dropped. Held in Solitary In the 1950's he defended anti-apartheid campaigners in political trials, gaining a reputation as an able lawyer. He also defended his former wife, Stefanie Kemp, a member of the African Resistance Movement. In 1963, Mr. Sachs was one of the first held under South Africa's law allowing detention without trial, and was kept in solitary confinement for 168 days. After his release, he wrote an autobiography, ''The Jail Diary of Albie Sachs,'' part of which was adapted as a play. It was first performed by the Royal Shakespeare Company and was recently on British television. It was staged in New York in 1979 at the Manhattan Theater Club. Shortly after his release, he left South Africa for Britain, where he lectured on law for more than 10 years at Southampton University. Assailed Pretoria Justice System

Mr. Sachs joined the African National Congress in 1969, when its ranks were first opened to whites. Tom Lodge, a political scientist at Witwatersrand University and an expert on the Congress, said Mr. Sachs's 1973 book on the South African legal system, ''Justice in South Africa,'' was the ''first powerfully argued critique of the South African system of justice.'' Since 1977, when he emigrated to Mozambique, Mr. Sachs has worked at Eduardo Mondlane University and has recently been employed by the Mozambican Justice Ministry to devise a legal system for a post-revolutionary socialist Mozambique. A prominent member of the Congress's commission on constitutional change, Mr. Sachs was also the author of a study, ''Towards a Reconstruction of South Africa,'' that served as the Congress's blueprint on constitutional change. It was published in 1985. U.S. EDUCATORS EXPRESS SHOCK

In New York yesterday, deans of the Columbia and Harvard Law Schools issued a statement expressing shock at the attack on Mr. Sachs, who had lectured widely in the United States. The statement praised his ''idealism, his courage and his unyielding struggle against apartheid,'' which they said had ''inspired thousands of American law students.'' It was signed by Barbara A. Black and Jack Greenberg, the dean and vice dean of the Columbia Law School, and by James Vorenberg, the dean of the Harvard Law School.

Source: New York Times

Foe of Apartheid Is Shot Dead in Paris

The Paris representative of the African National Congress was shot and killed today as she arrived at her office. The official, Dulcie September, a 45-year-old South African of mixed race, has served in France since 1984 as spokeswoman for the A.N.C., the most prominent anti-apartheid group.

Tom Sebina, a spokesman at the organization's headquarters in Lusaka, Zambia, blamed the South African Government for the killing and called on governments to crack down on all secret agents of the South African Government operating in their countries. But South Africa said it ''could not be held responsible'' for Miss September's death, and Foreign Minister Roelof F. Botha issued a statement noting that ''serious quarrels exist in the ranks of the organizations that utilize violence to obtain political objectives.''

The A.N.C. and the South-West Africa People's Organization have had political representation here, without diplomatic status, since 1981. Miss September came to Paris from Lusaka, where she worked as administrative secretary at the organization's offices. The French police said she was killed with a .22-caliber weapon as she was opening her office. She was found still holding her morning mail with two bullet wounds in the head and six empty shells on the floor.

The group's treasurer in Paris, Maurice Cukierman, said that Miss September had received several threats against her life over the last eight months and had told French police, but that ''nothing was done.'' On Sunday the Belgian police defused a bomb placed outside the A.N.C. office in Brussels, and in February shots were fired at the Belgian office of the group.

The congress maintains guerrillas in countries around South Africa, including Lesotho, Mozambique and Botswana, and has some 20 offices around the world to lobby for political support. It has been outlawed in South Africa since 1960, and its principal leader, Nelson Mandela, has been jailed there since 1962. Two slayings of A.N.C. figures in countries bordering on South Africa drew wide attention in the early 1980's.

Joe Gqabi, a congress representative in Zimbabwe, was killed by gunfire July 31, 1981, at his home in Harare, then called Salisbury. And on Aug. 17, 1982, Ruth First, was killed by a parcel bomb in her office in Maputo, Mozambique. She was a leading member of the A.N.C. and the wife of Joe Slovo, a South African Communist leader and a principal figure in the military wing of the A.N.C.

The killing here today quickly became an issue in the French presidential campaign. Prime Minister Jacques Chirac's Government was criticized by opponents on both the right and the left for what was called a lax attitude toward Miss September's security.

The Socialist Party called for a protest rally in front of the South African Embassy, and the Communist Party's presidential candidate, Andre Lajoinie, accused Mr. Chirac's Government of ''political complicity'' with South Africa. Mr. Chirac is a candidate for the presidency in the election next month, as is the Socialist incumbent, Francois Mitterrand. Mr. Mitterrand's wife, Danielle, said the killing of Miss September today provoked a sense ''of horror in the face the cowardice of this act.'' 4 GUERRILLAS REPORTED KILLED

JOHANNESBURG, March 29 -South African security forces announced today that they had shot and killed four suspected guerrillas of the African National Congress near the border with Zimbabwe on Monday. The gun battle in the northern tribal homeland of Venda brought the number of suspected guerrillas reported killed by the South African military to 12 in the last five days. The attacks follow repeated warnings by Pretoria in recent months to neighboring countries that allow guerrillas to use their territories.

The killing of the four guerrillas was announced today by Brig. Albertus Botha, Chief of Staff of the Far North Military Command in northern Transvaal. He said in an interview on state-run television that he did not regard the recent activity as new infiltration by guerrillas.

Source: New York Times

South Africa Bans New Anti-Apartheid Group

The South African Government today banned a new church-led anti-apartheid movement headed by Archbishop Desmond M. Tutu. The authorities also banned its first meeting, which was to have been held Sunday on a university campus near Cape Town. Several thousand people had been expected to attend.

A Government decree prohibits the committee from engaging in ''any activities whatsoever.'' Speaking 12 hours after the decree was published in the official Government newspaper, the archbishop announced that a prayer service would be held in St. George's Anglican Cathedral at the same time the banned meeting had been scheduled for Sunday afternoon. ''It is clear to us as it must be to everyone in the world that we are dealing here with a Government that is virtually totalitarian and determined to bludgeon God's people into submission,'' Archbishop Tutu said at a press conference.

Archbishop Stephen Naidoo, a Roman Catholic, said at the same conference that churches were now the only place where legal protest meetings could take place. The new movement, known as the Committee for the Defense of Democracy, was formed in Cape Town this week to continue the work of the United Democratic Front, the major anti-apartheid umbrella group, and 16 other groups effectively banned Feb. 24 from engaging in political activities.

Archbishop Tutu emphasized that the church service was not intended to replace the banned meeting and said there would be no attempt to form a new committee. But he added, ''We will get someone representing the community to speak.'' A nationwide crackdown on Feb. 24 effectively outlawed any organized anti-apartheid dissent except that expressed in places of worship.

Archbishop Tutu and the Reverend Allan A. Boesak, a patron of the United Democratic Front, were among 150 churchmen briefly arrested last month for protesting the bannings. Sunday is National Detainees Day, the day on which anti-apartheid groups usually organize meetings to pay respect to an estimated 25,000 people, about 10,000 of them children, who have been in detention without trial under a 21-month-old state of emergency. But the Detainees' Parents Support Committee, the group that organizes such protests, was banned last month along with 16 other anti-apartheid organizations and the Congress of South African Trade Unions, the major black trade union federation. The union federation and three of the anti-apartheid groups restricted in the crackdown have begun legal proceedings to challenge it in the courts.

Four church services to be held in other centers to mark National Detainees Day were not banned today. The most prominent of these was to be held in Regina Mundi Roman Catholic Church in Soweto, the sprawling black urban complex outside Johannesburg. Archbishop Tutu asked today what more proof President Reagan and Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher needed before they realized that they were dealing with a Government that ''will tolerate no opposition to its evil and immoral policies.'' ''We refuse to be treated as a doormat for people to wipe their jackboots on,'' he said. ''We refuse to be manipulated into a position of oppression.''

Source: New York Times

Bantu Holomisa deposes Stella Sigcau as President of the Transkei

On 30 December 1987, Major General Bantu Holomisa, commander of the Transkei Defence Force (TDF), a staunch African National Congress (ANC) activist, led a bloodless coup against the Transkei government. Holomisa, who would become Deputy Minister of Housing in President Nelson Mandela's cabinet, suspended the civilian constitution and refused South Africa's repeated demands for a return to civilian rule. He insisting that a civilian government would be a puppet controlled by Pretoria.

At the time of the coup Transkei was under the leadership of Stella Sigcau who would also be a Cabinet Minister in Mandela’s government. The Transkei was then ruled by a Military Council, with General Holomisa as Chairperson. Holomisa and his accomplices later applied for amnesty to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) for what they did in 1987.

Source: SA History Online

Israeli Soldiers Kill a Palestinian and Wound 15

Israeli troops shot and killed a West Bank resident and wounded at least 15 other Palestinians today as violent unrest continued for the second day and spread throughout the occupied territories. In the city of Gaza and in refugee districts throughout the Gaza Strip, where a 17-year-old youth was killed yesterday by troops, Palestinians gathered in throngs, burned tires, threw stones at vehicles and blocked roads, witnesses said. Army reports said 5 people were wounded by gunshots in the West Bank and 10 were wounded by gunfire in the Gaza Strip. In addition, a dozen people were hurt in scuffles between Palestinian students and the Israeli police outside a school north of Jerusalem, according to radio reports.

Soldiers fatally shot the 19-year-old Nablus man today when a group of Palestinian youths in the northern West Bank city surrounded a military patrol, pelting it with iron bars and rocks, an army spokesman said. ''The forces tried to disperse them with rubber bullets and tear gas,'' a spokesman said. ''But the force was endangered when its officer was wounded from an iron bar, and the soldiers had no choice but to shoot to get themselves out.''

A woman tried to stab a Border Police soldier in the nearby Balata refugee district but he managed to grab the knife from her hand just in time, an army spokesman said. In the Khan Yunis refugee district in the Gaza Strip, soldiers opened fire and wounded at least eight people after crowds threw gasoline bombs at a military patrol, an army spokesman said. At least two wounded people were brought into the Shifa hospital in Gaza, where merchants along the main street closed their shops and schools were disrupted by protesting students, an army spokesman said. Investigations by Army The army said it was investigating all of the shooting incidents. One unidentified soldier, serving in Gaza city, told Israel's Army Radio, ''We try to be restrained and not let things heat up to much, but when there's a situation that puts us in danger we have to act accordingly.''

By late afternoon, the riots and clashes that had continued throughout the day subsided, the army spokesman said. The Jabalya refugee district, where a resident was shot to death Wednesday after a teenager threw a firebomb at soldiers, remained sealed today.

In the West Bank areas north of Jerusalem, two gasoline bombs were thrown at vehicles today but did not explode. Six Israeli policemen and as many Palestinian teen-agers were injured when the police tried to control students who poured out of a high school at Kalandia, north of Jerusalem, and started stoning passing vehicles, radio reports said.

Burkina Faso President Thomas Sankara's 'Against debt' speech 1987

Thomas Isidore Noël Sankara (December 21, 1949 – October 15, 1987) was a Burkinabé military captain, Marxist revolutionary, Pan-Africanist theorist, and communist President of Burkina Faso from 1983 to 1987. Viewed as a charismatic, and iconic figure of revolution, he is commonly referred to as "...Africa's Che Guevara."

Sankara seized power in a 1983 popularly supported coup at the age of 33, with the goal of eliminating corruption and the dominance of the former French colonial power.He immediately launched "the most ambitious program for social and economic change ever attempted on the African continent." To symbolize this new autonomy and rebirth, he even renamed the country from the French colonial Upper Volta to Burkina Faso ("Land of Upright Men"). His foreign policies were centered around anti-imperialism, with his government eschewing all foreign aid, pushing for odious debt reduction, nationalizing all land and mineral wealth, and averting the power and influence of the IMF and World Bank. His domestic policies were focused on preventing famine with agrarian self-sufficiency and land reform, prioritizing education with a nation-wide literacy campaign, and promoting public health by vaccinating 2.5 million children against meningitis, yellow fever and measles. Other components of his national agenda included planting over ten million trees to halt the growing desertification of the Sahel, doubling wheat production by redistributing land from feudal landlords to peasants, suspending rural poll taxes and domestic rents, and establishing an ambitious road and rail construction program to "tie the nation together." Moreover, his commitment to women's rights led him to outlaw female genital mutilation, forced marriages and polygamy; while appointing females to high governmental positions and encouraging them to work outside the home and stay in school even if pregnant.

In order to achieve this radical transformation of society, he increasingly exerted authoritarian control over the nation, eventually banning unions and a free press, which he believed could stand in the way of his plans and be manipulated by powerful outside influences To counter his opposition in towns and workplaces around the country, he also tried corrupt officials, counter-revolutionaries (and) "lazy workers" in peoples revolutionary tribunals. Additionally, as an admirer of Fidel Castro's Cuban Revolution, Sankara set up Cuban-style Committees for the Defense of the Revolution (CDR's).

His revolutionary programs for African self-reliance as a defiant alternative to the neo-liberal development strategies imposed by the West, made him an icon to many of Africa's poor, and despite his excesses, Sankara remained popular with most of his country's impoverished citizens. However his policies alienated and antagonised the vested interests of an array of groups, which included the small but powerful Burkinabé middle class, the tribal leaders whom he stripped of the long-held traditional right to forced labour and tribute payments, and the foreign financial interests in France and their ally the Ivory Coast. As a result, he was overthrown and assassinated in a coup d'état led by the French-backed Blaise Compaoré on October 15, 1987. A week before his execution he declared that, "While revolutionaries as individuals can be murdered, you cannot kill ideas".

Source:

SYRIA: STRUCTURE OF SOCIETY

In the mid-1980s, Syrian society was in a state of flux. The social, political, and economic developments of the preceding two decades precipitated profound changes and realignments in the social structure, but the implications and probable outcomes of these changes were not entirely clear. This uncertainty arises from the division of Syrian society by vertical cleavages along religious and ethnic lines, as well as by horizontal cleavages along socioeconomic and class lines. Minority groups tend to segregate themselves in their own neighborhoods and villages. Although within a minority group there is a high degree of integration and homogeneity, the group as a whole is often ascribed a certain social status. Traditionally, Syrian society has been divided between landlords and tenants, between urban dwellers and rural peasants, and between a Sunni elite and minority groups.

Until the revolutions of the mid-1960s, a syndicate of several hundred Sunni Muslim extended families living in Damascus and Aleppo had dominated life in Syria. Some of these families were of the Sharifan nobility, which claims genealogical descent from the Prophet Muhammad. Most had accumulated great wealth and wielded virtual feudal power as landlords possessing vast agricultural and real-estate holdings. Others made fortunes in industry and trade in the late ninteenth century. Another component of the ruling class was the ulama (sing, alim). This group consisted of religious scholars, Islamic judges (qadis), interpreters of law (muftis), and other persons concerned with the exposition of Sunni Islam. Prosperous Sunni bazaar merchants allied with the great families occupied the next level in the social heirarchy.

The Syrian elite was at the forefront of anticolonial struggle against the Ottoman Empire in World War I and later against the French Mandatory regime. At independence in 1946, Syria's first government was dominated by the old ruling class. However, the elite had never been a monolithic entity, and the new parliament was splintered by factionalism, feuding, and generational differences. These divisions provoked a military coup d'état in 1949 that ushered in a new era in Syrian society.

The armed services and the Baath Party were the mechanisms for the rise of a new ruling elite. Although military service traditionally had been disdained by the old Sunni elite, a military career was often the only avenue of upward mobility open to rural minority group members who could not afford an education. Such men enlisted in disproportinate numbers and came to dominate the officer corps and the enlisted ranks of Syria's armed forces. Likewise, disenfranchised elements of society joined the Baath Party. These dual trends culminated in the 1963 Baath Socialist Revolution and the 1970 takeover by the military of the Baath Party.

The land reform legislation of 1963 and the nationalization of larger financial, commercial, and industrial establishments virtually eliminated the economic and political power base of the old elite. At the same time, the new elite, comprised of the upper echelon of military and civilian leaders, consolidated its position by cultivating the support of peasants and the proletariat, who benefited from the new economic order. The regime's socialism eroded the position of the bazaar merchants while its secularism removed power from the ulama.

After coming to power in 1970, President Hafiz al Assad reversed or relaxed the more strident socialist economic measures instituted in 1963. His expansion of the role of the private sector led to the emergence of a relatively small, but highly visible new class of entrepreneurs and businessmen who made fortunes in real estate, importing, and construction. This class, nicknamed in Syria "the velvet generation," includes higher- ranking government bureaucrats and their relatives who have capitalized on their official positions to monopolize lucrative government contracts. It also has assimilated many members of the old Sunni elite, who have been coopted by the Assad regime and have accommodated themselves to the new elite. To some extent, the old and new ruling classes have merged through business partnerships and marriages that combine the money and prestige of the old elite member and the power and prestige of the new elite member. Despite a well publicized anti-corruption campaign, patronage and favoritism have remained important forces in Syrian society.

Under Assad, rural peasants have reaped significant gains in their standard of living, primarily through government transfer payments and grants of land redistributed from the original upper-class owners. However, land reform has not been entirely successful in transforming the social structure of the countryside. In many cases, farmers who had previously depended upon their urban landlords to give credit for financing their crops until harvest and to deal with the government have drifted back into similar relationships with urban interests. The landlord's role as an influential advocate and local leader has not been filled by elected Baath Party representatives. In other cases, rich proprietors have begun to regain control over agricultural land and reconstitute large estates.

Since the 1963 Baath Revolution, the approximate middle of Syrian society has remained remarkably stable, both as a percentage of the workforce and in terms of the standard of living and social mobility of its members. Because Syria has not yet developed a large industrial sector, it lacks a true proletariat of wage-earning factory workers. The number of persons employed by private and public sector industry in 1980 was 207,000, or 12 percent of the working population, according to statistics compiled by the Syrian General Federation of Trade Unions. This approximates the size of Syria's "working class."

Syria compensates for its lack of a large proletarian class of industrial factory workers by a large and flourishing group of artisans and handicrafters who produce basic commodities such as soap, textiles, glassware, and shoes in small cottage industries. This group is a main component of Syria's traditional middle class, which also encompasses small proprietors, tradesmen, and white-collar employees, and has remained at about 30 percent of the population.

Since the 1963 revolution, a new and upwardly mobile class of teachers, scientists, lawyers, technocrats, civil servants, doctors, and other professionals has slowly emerged. This new upper-middle class consists of men and women who rose from the old lower or middle classes by virtue of technical or secular higher education.

Even before the revolution of 1963, secular education had become a criterion of status among many ordinary Syrians, especially as higher education ensured a virtually automatic entry into admired and well-paying occupations. The importance of education in this context will probably grow.

Values taught in the schools and emphasized in the media reflect those of the group controlling the government and have gained some currency. Nevertheless, the traditional conservatism of the peasants as well as the economic problems of daily survival that have not been alleviated by changes in government policy militate against any sudden change in the values or way of life of the masses.

As in other Middle Eastern countries, Syrian society has for millennia been divided into three discrete systems of organization based on ecological factors; these are the town, the village, and the tribe. Although closely interrelated, each fosters a distinct and independent variation of Arab culture. The cities of the Middle East are among the most ancient in the world; urban life has been integral to the society of the region throughout recorded history. Therefore, the townsman and his role are well known to all segments of the population. The tribesman, or beduin, although suffering irreversible changes since the mid- twentieth century, has also been a widely known and admired figure throughout history. The peasant farmer, or fellah (pl., fellahin), although less admired than the townsman or the tribesman, also occupies a position of recognized value.

The members of each of the three structural segments of society look on the others as socially distinct. This social distance is symbolized by easily recognized differences in clothing, food, home furnishings, accent, and custom; intermarriage between village, town, and tribal families is usually considered irregular.

Traditionally, the cities have been an expression--at the highest level of sophistication and refinement--of the same Arab culture that animated the villages. As Western influence grew, however, during the late nineteenth and the twentieth centuries, the social distance between the city and village increased. Western customs, ideas, techniques, and languages were adopted first in the cities, especially by Christians, while the villages remained ignorant of them. The introduction and adoption of elements of a radically alien culture opened a gap between the city and the village that has not narrowed with time. Only in recent years have modern transportation and mass communication begun to bring the countryside once again into the same cultural orbit as the cities.

Although the town, village, and tribe are socially distinct, they depend on each other for services and products and so are related by overall functional ties. The town supplies manufactured, specialty, and luxury products; administrative and governmental services; education and higher learning; sophisticated culture; law and justice; and financing. The village supplies agricultural products; and the tribe provides protection and navigation for caravans, travelers, and traders in the desert. As more and more villagers become educated and move to the cities, and as the beduin surrender their sole mastery of the desert to motor vehicles and the police power of the modern state and begin to adopt a sedentary life, the traditional distinctions will continue to blur.

Towns
Villages
Tribes

Thomas Collelo, ed. Syria: A Country Study. Washington: GPO for the Library of Congress, 1987.
Source: U.S. Library of Congress

Brandenburg Gate in West Berlin, Germany on June 12, 1987

President Reagan's remarks on East-West relations at the Brandenburg Gate in West Berlin, Germany on June 12, 1987.

For more information on the ongoing works of President Reagan's Foundation, visit us at http://www.reaganfoundation.org

Source: Regan Foundation

Reagan’s Dangerous Game in Nicaragua

By supporting the contras, the president is undermining democracy in Central America

Natividad Vargas shifted his weight from one foot to the other, awkwardly folding and refolding his arms as he answered questions from the visiting journalists. The Honduran peasant sounded confused and a little frightened. It is the way refugees always sound when war sweeps over the countryside and drives them from their homes. He did not understand, he said, why two foreign armies were fighting in his native land — Nicaragua’s Sandinista army and the American-backed contras.

“We campesinos don’t understand politics,” Vargas said. “I don’t know why they’re fighting. The contras say they are fighting communism. But I don’t understand that.”

Eight days earlier, Vargas and his family, along with scores of others, had abandoned their farm a few miles from the Nicaraguan border after the Sandinista army had attacked contra strongholds there. In all, at least 15,000 Hondurans, perhaps many more, have been displaced by the war and forced to find squatter homes in towns away from the fighting. Neither the Honduran government nor the United States has provided them with any help.

Another peasant, a gaunt old man with white stubble on his dark face, gave a vivid account of the bomb, mine and mortar explosions he had heard as the opposing forces fought across his fields. “I was really frightened,” he said. “I don’t want to go back as long as there is firing.”

“The Sandinistas only come in because the contras are here,” said Eldermarina Gonzales, a displaced mother with five small children. “If the contras were gone, the Sandinistas would not come.”

The refugees we talked with were living in Nueva Esperanza, a hillside barrio outside of Danli, a quiet little farm town about an hour’s drive from Tegucigalpa and only fifteen miles from the border and the fighting. The contras operate a small hospital in Danli to treat their sick and wounded.

The more the peasants talked about the contras, the angrier they became. They did not like having to live with a foreign army in their midst — men who are well armed and well financed by the United States. “Look around you — this is a very poor country,” Jose Amaya, a merchant, said. “If we had money, we would all go to the United States. I think the contras should get out. They have no business being here. These countries are sisters. We should find a way to exist in peace.”

“I’m going to tell the truth, even if I get in trouble,” Natividad Vargas declared. “The truth is the contras treat us very badly. Imagine. You’re going to town and the contras are guarding the road and they ask us for papers. What right does a foreigner have to ask us for papers in our own country? They accuse us of helping the Sandinistas. They killed one of my neighbors and they killed his son. We don’t know why. It’s not our land anymore. They do whatever they want.”

As we were touring the neighborhood, we could hear the distant clatter of helicopters. Children pointed knowingly to the north at a few small, dark specks that were passing above a far mountain ridge and moving down the valley. Soon the specks became a swarm as more than a dozen American helicopters, Cobras and Chinooks, crossed overhead and disappeared to the south. They were ferrying Honduran soldiers to the war.

“The people have become so used to it,” a woman said. “They don’t even get scared anymore.”

Later, we drove a few miles south from Danli to the site where the helicopters were landing. It was a small airstrip built by the United States in the valley of Jamastran. Honduran soldiers — some serious, some loose and joking — were disembarking in the swirls of dust and trotting off down the country lanes. They were pulling heavy mortars behind them as they fanned out to set up defensive positions on the surrounding farms. An American army lieutenant named Lappas stepped forward from a circle of Honduran officers and told us to get lost. He pretended to be puzzled by our questions.

“What war?” he asked blandly. “I didn’t know we were at war. What makes you think there’s a war here?”

The Reagan administration is playing a dangerous game in Honduras: intentionally flirting with war. While the White House continues to claim that its military buildup here is strictly for training exercises, the Sandinistas and most Hondurans believe that the administration is trying to push both sides toward war in order to justify American military intervention in Nicaragua.

As a result of the occasional border clashes with Honduran troops, the Sandinistas might be drawn into a larger war against Honduras or, alternatively, the Honduran military might be shamed into launching a full-scale attack against Nicaragua. In either event, the Reagan administration could claim that a valued ally was under assault and that it must provide support by bombing Managua or even landing American troops inside Nicaragua. Fortunately, neither Honduras nor Nicaragua intends to play along. “What the United States fears,” Miguel D’Escoto, Nicaragua’s foreign minister, told me in Managua, “is not that we will attack Honduras. What they fear is that we won’t. They would like nothing better than for us to do it. We would be serving them on a silver platter the pretext they are looking for to make a direct intervention. They are concerned, they are angry that we don’t fall into the trap.”

In Tegucigalpa, Honduran officials put the matter more obliquely, but they also do not intend to be drawn into a war. Even while Sandinista soldiers were fighting inside Honduran territory, and Honduras was responding with troop deployments and bombing, Honduran diplomat Roberto Suazo Tome, an adviser to the minister of foreign affairs, was emphasizing the peaceful relationship between the two nations. “The Sandinistas have penetrated our borders from time to time, and there has even been sporadic fighting between our troops and theirs,” Suazo said, “but the level of political and diplomatic relations are good. We’ve had many meetings with high-level Sandinista officials. Our economic minister has traveled three times to Nicaragua to increase trade between the countries. Honduran businessmen have traveled to Nicaragua, and we are planning a visit to Honduras by Nicaraguan industrialists. So we have many different forms of economic cooperation. Nicaragua is a sister country. We do not use aggressive rhetoric toward them. We can exist with them, and we have mutual respect between our two systems.”

In any case, the Hondurans do not believe America can defeat the Sandinistas, through either military conflict or political agitation. “The contras are already defeated,” Suazo said. “It’s only a question of time.”

Suazo has proposed a solution to the problem along his border: the United States should grant asylum to the 20,000 contras and get them out of Honduras. “Our government has declared on many occasions that the presence of the contras in our territory is neither desired nor authorized nor tolerated,” he insisted. “But it is beyond our capacity to impede their presence.”

The civil government is not in control of events here. The generals are. The Honduran constitution forbids the stationing of foreign military forces without congressional approval, but the Honduran congress was not consulted. It was the Honduran military that provided sanctuary for the contra army and allowed the deployment of American troops. In return, the generals received generous military aid from the United States.

“The contras are like an unwanted guest,” Honduran sociologist and journalist Victor Meza explained. “But they are tolerated by the military because they bring money, and it means money to the military. The contras are their blackmail — their card to blackmail Washington for more aid. It’s also their card with which they can negotiate with the Sandinistas, behind the backs of thecontras. And the contras are good for business. They have made people rich here, civilians and military personnel.”

In Managua, Carlos Chamorro, editor of the Sandinista newspaper La Barricada, described the game being played by the Honduran generals. “They have to sell themselves to the U.S. to get the aid,” Chamorro said, “so they participate in actions against our army on the border, but they have been restrained. Why? Because they do not want to fall into a total death trap with Nicaragua.”

In the Honduran capital, Victor Meza offered a similar analysis. “The Honduran military,” he said, “knows that war should be avoided. Even if Honduras could win, they know that the real winner would be the United States and the contras, not Honduras. They know that if they were to win, this war, all the U.S. aid currently going to Honduras would then go to Nicaragua. So they know if they win, they lose. For that reason, they have done everything to avoid going to war.”

But if either the Honduran generals or the Sandinista leaders should miscalculate, then the Reagan administration may get what it wants — a regional war in Central America. American planes and troops could then be dispatched to fight another war in the name of freedom.

In Tegucigalpa, a city ringed by mountains, every window seems to have a spectacular view. Unlike Managua, the Honduran capital has a false glow of prosperity — downtown streets are clogged with traffic, store windows are filled with American toys and appliances. Militarization can be good for business without doing anything to improve a country’s basic economy; there was a similar bustle of commerce in Saigon at one time.

Honduras has been a passive nation for many decades, resigned to the dominance of military oligarchs and accustomed to blatant manipulation by American ambassadors. The country served as the staging area for the CIA’s overthrow of Guatemala’s elected government in 1954; now it has allowed itself to become the support base for America’s proxy war against Nicaragua. “The United States has a democracy inside,” said Efrain Diaz, a Christian Democrat in the national assembly, “but the U.S. acts as an empire in its relations with countries such as Honduras. We have let the United States do what it wants. We have been so easy.”

Popular dissent, nevertheless, is slowly finding its voice. Antiwar petitions proliferate as more and more organizations demand that the government stop America’s military adventure here. A blue and white peace poster proclaims, OUR COUNTRY — NOT FOR SALE, NOT FOR HIRE, NOT FOR LOAN … GRINGO TROOPS OUT … CONTRAS OUT.

“The worst problem this country has is that eighty percent of its people live in poverty,” Diaz explained. “Our main problem is development. It is not this problem with Nicaragua. But as long as we have this permanent conflict, I don’t think there is any way in which Honduras can really grow, no way Honduras can really develop. To me, that’s one of the consequences. The other is that we’re going to become a very polarized society. You cannot destabilize Nicaragua without destabilizing Honduras and the other countries in Central America.”

America’s Cold War-inspired foreign policy is creating some of the same problems in Central America that it produced twenty years ago in Indochina. While the Reagan administration claims to be defending the region’s democracies against Soviet domination, its military presence is actually undermining them. Anxious voices from the region plead futilely that East-West conflict is not the relevant issue. Poverty is the issue. So is the right of self-determination.

Miguel D’Escoto, Nicaragua’s foreign minister, has offered a powerful metaphor to explain why the American government cannot tolerate the revolutionary regime in his country. “We do not accept what the U.S. would like to impose — the status of a backyard nation,” he said. “The U.S. is afraid because it realizes that if Nicaragua is allowed to get away with this, then others will demand the same. The situation is like what you once had here in Nicaragua with the landowners. They related to peons in a very special way. The peon never entered the house. He came up to the front steps, he never sat down, he stood up. He took off his hat and he always addressed the señor as usted, the formal way of saying ‘you.’ Imagine the landowner’s reaction if one day, out of the blue, this peon walks right into the house, goes right into the living room and sits in the rocking chair. He folds his legs and calls the señor by the informal tú. He begins to relate as an equal. That’s what Nicaragua has done, too.”

Many citizens of Honduras would love to do the same someday.

America should realize that it has nothing to lose by abandoning its patronizing policies toward Central America’s small and struggling nations. Only then will the region be ensured of democractic and economic growth. As long as our government bullies, bribes and manipulates these countries, as it is now doing in Honduras, it can only expect that they will remain backward, cynical and utterly dependent.

Unfortunately, a new American perspective on Central America will have to wait until there is a new president in Washington. Even if Congress cuts off financing for the contras this year, the White House will not lose its hunger for conflict. The Sandinistas will continue to offer a mutual-security agreement for the region, but no one really expects Ronald Reagan to negotiate a peaceful settlement. The most we can hope for is to get through the last two years of this administration without stumbling — or being tricked — into a larger war.

Reagan’s final days will be a difficult period for all the players in Central America. The Sandinistas know that they are capable of defeating the contras in battle, even wiping them out, but they also know that a clear-cut victory would increase the risk of direct American intervention. The Reagan administration, mired in the contra-gate scandal, knows that it has little time left to defeat the Sandinistas. Will it simply walk away from a lost cause? Or will it launch a desperate strike against the Nicaraguan government? The recent announcement by the United States that it would be sending 3000 troops and 4500 national guardsmen from eight states and Puerto Rico to Honduras to participate in joint military exercises indicates that Reagan intends to raise the stakes in this dangerous game.

As for the contras, they may be pushed by the White House to go for quick victories inside Nicaragua this year in order to maintain political support in Congress. Given the Sandinistas’ superior forces, that could be a suicide mission. “I wouldn’t like to be with the contras right now,” said Victor Meza, “because I think everyone is trying to negotiate behind their backs. Possibly what will happen to them is that they’ll be forced into Nicaragua and they will be defeated by the Sandinistas.”

And if the United States finally abandons the struggle, as it did in Vietnam, a lot of Ronald Reagan’s “Freedom fighters” are going to be left behind when the last American helicopter departs.

Honduras, meanwhile, faces its own problems. Politicians here are beginning to wonder what will happen if Congress cuts off aid to the contras and Reagan abandons them. What will become of the occupying army that now virtually governs the southern flank of this country? Who will be able to control the contras?

“If the U.S. cuts off aid,” Roberto Suazo said, “the contras will need to eat. They’ll still need medicine. That could create very serious problems for Honduras…. What I mean to say is that a person with a gun will get what he needs. As we say in Central America, we need to feed our people today, not tomorrow. And the contras will do the same.”

Source: Rolling Stone

SOMALI LEADER GETS 99.9%

Somalia's official radio announced today that President Mohamed Siad Barre had won a new seven-year term with more than 99.9 percent of the vote in an uncontested election. The Somali radio, in a broadcast monitored in Nairobi, said 4,887,592 people voted for General Siad Barre and 1,486 against him in the election on Tuesday.

The President was seriously injured in an automobile accident in May, and there have been conflicting reports as to the extent of his recovery. But he was nominated for another term last month by the Somali Revolutionary Socialist Party, the country's only legal political party. Virtually the only overt opposition in Somalia is a sporadic insurgency by two guerrilla groups.

General Siad Barre has governed his East African nation since 1969, when he took power in a military coup. He has presided over a radical shift in his country's foreign policies. His army invaded a disputed area of southeastern Ethiopia called the Ogaden in 1977 when Somalia was allied with the Soviet Union and adhered to Marxist policies. At about the same time, Ethiopia split with the United States and became more closely aligned with the Soviet Union. With the help of Cuban troops and billions of dollars' worth of Soviet weapons, the Ethiopians turned back the Somalis.

General Siad Barre subsequently denounced the Russians and Marxism, and the United States has emerged as Somalia's chief ally. The Government continues to exercise extensive control over the economy, but the private sector has expanded sharply in the last two years. Secretary of State George P. Shultz is tentatively scheduled to visit Somalia next month.

Source: New York Times

MOZAMBICAN PRESIDENT DIES IN AIR CRASH IN SOUTH AFRICA

President Samora M. Machel, leader of Mozambique since it won independence from Portugal in 1975, was killed Sunday night in a plane crash in South Africa, the Pretoria Government announced today. The cause of the crash, on a flight from Lusaka, Zambia, to Maputo, Mozambique, was not known. The Mozambican authorities, who withheld a formal announcement while they debated the succession and other issues, confirmed Mr. Machel's death about 24 hours after the crash.

The 53-year-old President was an important figure among African leaders opposed to apartheid. His death coincided with increasing strains in Mozambique's relationship with South Africa after the virtual collapse of a 1984 nonaggression pact. Mr. Machel led a Marxist Government but was far from being an ideologue who followed a strict Marxist-Leninist line, and in recent years he seemed above all a pragmatic nationalist. The South African authorities said at least 26 people, including President Machel, had been killed in the crash. Ten people survived, one of them thought to be a Soviet pilot.

South Africa, which is backing Mozambican rebels seeking President Machel's overthrow, made no mention of possible sabotage or attack when it announced the Mozambican leader's death in a brief statement from the office of President P. W. Botha. But the South African Government, eager to avoid accusations that it played a role in the crash, said foreign aviation experts would be welcome to assist in any investigations. Foreign Minister Roelof F. Botha invited Mozambican representatives to inspect the crash site.

President Machel was returning from northern Zambia, where he had met the Presidents of Zambia, Angola and Zaire. Both the African National Congress, the most prominent of the organizations seeking the overthrow of apartheid, and the official Zambian press agency sought to implicate South Africa and the Mozambican rebels in Mr. Machel's death. Alfred Nzo, general secretary of the congress, said in Copenhagen that the crash was a ''deliberately committed crime'' by South Africa or its Mozambican allies.

The Mozambican leader's Soviet-made TU-134 twin-engine jet crashed in a hilly, remote area of Transvaal Province, near South Africa's borders with Swaziland and Mozambique. The crash site was a few miles from Komatipoort, the border town in which Mr. Machel signed the nonaggression accord with P. W. Botha, then Prime Minister, in 1984. South African newspapers asserted that the plane had strayed over South African territory in bad weather. Foreign Minister Botha said the aircraft crashed a few hundred yards inside South African territory after apparently running into difficulties in Mozambican airspace. The South African Bureau for Information said those killed included two leading Mozambican officials, Transport Minister Luis Maria Alcantara Santos and Deputy Foreign Minister Jose Carlos Lopo.

Mozambican rebels based in Lisbon said Defense Minister Alberto Joaquim Chipande had been killed in the crash, but there was no independent confirmation of the report. A Zairean diplomat was also reported killed. The first word of the crash came from Foreign Minister Botha, who announced on the South African state radio that an unidentified aircraft flying from Lusaka to Maputo had crashed in the border area. Shortly afterward, the state-run Mozambican radio broke into its programs to announce that Mr. Machel had not returned on schedule from Zambia and that an air crash in South Africa was under investigation. The radio began to play solemn music.

Marcelino dos Santos, a Politburo member and the Secretary of Parliament, urged Mozambicans to remain calm and ''keep vigilant in order to neutralize any enemy action to provoke instability and any criminal behavior.'' The appeal seemed to reflect official fears that the Mozambique National Resistance, a South African-backed rebel group that has claimed major successes in recent weeks, might try to press a perceived advantage. Foreign Minister Botha, touring the crash site, told reporters, ''Without Machel, one is concerned that conflict will escalate.''

President Machel's powerful personality made him the unchallenged leader of the Mozambique Liberation Front, or Frelimo, a Marxist group that is the country's only legal political movement. Mr. dos Santos, along with Foreign Minister Joaquim Alberto Chissano and Prime Minister Mario Machungo, are said by analysts in Maputo to be likely contenders for Mozambique's presidency. Mr. Machel signed a nonaggression pact with South Africa on March 16, 1984, in the hope that his withdrawal of support for the African National Congress would, under the terms of the treaty, end Pretoria's support for the Mozambique National Resistance. From the outset, the security accord has encountered problems. Mozambique has accused South Africa of continuing to support the rebels, while Pretoria has accused Mozambique of renewing its backing for guerrillas of the African National Congress.

Source: New York Times

LIBERIAN OPPOSITION POLITICIAN FLEES TO NEW YORK

Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, an opposition politician in Liberia who was cleared of charges of complicity in a coup attempt last year, said she fled to the United States this month after the chairman of the ruling party threatened her life.

In her first public statement since she arrived in New York on Sept. 1, Mrs. Johnson-Sirleaf said last week that she decided to leave the West African country after being denied an exit visa and after her home was ransacked. She said the chairman of the ruling National Democratic Party of Liberia, Keikura B. Kpoto, who is also a senator in the national legislature, told her on Aug. 16 that "something might happen to you, and no one would be responsible." She said he also warned her not to take part in protests against the Government's arrest of three other opposition leaders.

Two days later, she said, her home was broken into by people in civilian clothes who wrecked it while she hid nearby. The men told neighbors they were looking for her, Mrs. Johnson-Sirleaf said. "I took the threat seriously," she said of Mr. Kpoto's warning. "I think I could be more effective there, but because I wanted to be alive, I had to leave."

Mr. Kpoto, reached by telephone in Monrovia, the Liberian capital, denied that he had threatened Mrs. Johnson-Sirleaf and said she had used "cheap politics" to advance her political standing. Mr. Kpoto said he had asked her "as a neighbor" to call off a demonstration that the Government had prohibited. "I told her that if you put people in the streets, you never know what might happen, and you cannot hold anyone responsible," he said. "If I wanted to threaten her why would I have done it in front of witnesses?"

Mr. Kpoto said Mrs. Johnson-Sirleaf's home was ransacked by disgruntled demonstrators who were angered when she failed to attend a rally. J. Emmanuel Bowier, a spokesman for the Liberian Embassy in Washington, said his Government did not know Mrs. Johnson-Sirleaf had left the country. He said 12 men had been arrested in the attack on her house.

Mrs. Johnson-Sirleaf said she would continue to speak out from the United States against the Government of Gen. Samuel K. Doe and would work with a coalition of opposition political parties to get new presidential elections. She said she would like to "take her chances" as a candidate for President.

General Doe won an election last October in which it was reported he received 50.1 percent of the vote. Opposition leaders say the count was rigged.

Mrs. Johnson-Sirleaf, a Liberian who became a vice president of Citibank while working for the bank in Kenya, has been an outspoken critic of General Doe and his aides despite a military decree making it a crime to spread "lies, rumors or disinformation." She was jailed in 1985 for calling Government officials "idiots." Mrs. Johnson-Sirleaf was again jailed, for seven months, after the coup attempt last November. The Government failed to present evidence of her involvement, and she was released from prison on June 6. On June 8, she said, she applied for a travel visa but was refused. She said she was told her possible connection to the coup attempt was still being investigated.

Mrs. Johnson-Sirleaf refused to disclose how she was able to leave Liberia, but denied breaking any laws. "I was not charged with anything," she said. "I was just exercising a right of travel that should not have been denied."

In July, a Monrovia newspaper erroneously reported that Mrs. Johnson-Sirleaf fled arrest after staging an illegal rally in Buchanan, a coastal town. It was later learned that there was no rally but that she had been surrounded by well-wishers. She said she returned to Monrovia oblivious of an attempt by a local senator to have her arrested.

Mrs. Johnson-Sirleaf said national reconciliation, which General Doe has advocated since Government troops thwarted the overthrow attempt, was now just a "fleeting possibility."

Source: New York Times

An Opposition Leader Flees Arrest in Liberia

A Liberian opposition politician, Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, fled arrest after staging an illegal weekend rally, the Star newspaper said today. The paper said that the woman, a former Citibank vice president whose case has drawn attention in the United States, held the rally in Buchanan, about 70 miles from Monrovia, without a permit.

Her arrest was ordered by the local Senator, Charles Williams, who was quoted as having said that he would have personally jailed her if she had been caught by the police. She was one of more than 20 political prisoners released from jail by President Samuel Doe last month after being held in connection with an attempted coup in November 1985. The prisoners were told to stay in Liberia.

Source: New York Times

WORLD COURT SUPPORTS NICARAGUA AFTER U.S. REJECTED JUDGES' ROLE

The International Court of Justice ruled today that the Reagan Administration had broken international law and violated Nicaraguan sovereignty by aiding the anti-Government rebels.

The Court, the judicial arm of the United Nations, ordered Washington to halt the ''arming and training'' of the insurgents and to pay Nicaragua for damages caused by military attacks, some of which it said had been carried out by the United States itself.

The judgment, which was widely expected, came after 26 months of litigation on Nicaragua's complaint. U.S. Rejects the Verdict

In Washington, a State Department spokesman said the United States rejected the Court's verdict, and said the body was ''not equipped'' to judge complex international military issues. The American spokesman added that ''we consider our policy in Central America to be entirely consistent with international law.'' [ Page 4. ] In January 1985 the Administration said it would defy the Court and ignore further proceedings in the case because of its view that the World Court, as it is commonly called, has no jurisdiction to decide cases involving ongoing armed conflicts. The Court rejected this position last November.

Throughout the case, the argument that the United States was giving military aid to the contras was never in serious dispute. However, before Washington formally withdrew from the case, it argued that United States actions against Nicaragua were ''collective self-defense'' against Nicaraguan support of leftist guerrillas in El Salvador and elsewhere.

The Court's findings were announced two days after the House of Representatives endorsed President Reagan's plan to provide $100 million in new aid to the rebels, with $70 million earmarked for military assistance. Three Dissenters

The World Court consists of 15 judges: one, the chief judge, from India; two from France, and one each from Poland, Argentina, Nigeria, Italy, Brazil, Senegal, Algeria, China, Norway, Japan, the United States and Britain. The American, British and Japanese judges dissented on the most important issues in the case.

The Court deferred a ruling on Nicaragua's petition for $370 million in damages from the United States, saying it wished to give the two countries a chance to negotiate a settlement themselves. However, the Court said it would step in if no accord materialized.

Abram Chayes, a counsel for the Managua Government, said in Washington today that as a result of the ruling, Nicaragua intends to sue the United States for more than $1 billion in damages in United States courts. In New York, Nora Astorga, Nicaragua's chief envoy to the United Nations, said her Government had asked for a Security Council meeting to discuss how to make the United States comply with the ruling.

The Court has no enforcement powers. It depends on voluntary compliance with its rulings by nations coming before it. #15 Counts Against U.S.

The Court ruled against the United States on 15 counts.

The Court found the United States violated customary international law and Nicaragua's sovereignty by ''training, arming, equipping, financing and supplying the contra forces.'' It also found the United States guilty of direct attacks on Nicaraguan oil installations, ports and shipping in 1983 and 1984.

It held that the United States broke international law by authorizing overflights of Nicaraguan territory and by mining Nicaraguan ports and harbors in 1984. The Court also ruled that the United States trade embargo against Nicaragua, decreed in May 1985, violates a 1956 treaty of friendship between the two countries.

The Court also condemned the United States for allowing distribution of a Central Intelligence Agency manual on guerrilla warfare techniques to the contras, saying it encourages ''acts contrary to the general principles of humanitarian law.''

A majority of judges rejected the American claim that it was acting in the ''collective self-defense'' of El Salvador, Costa Rica and Honduras because Nicaragua was supporting rebel movements in these countries.

The Court said Nicaraguan aid to rebels in El Salvador was mainly in 1980 and 1981, before the United States stepped up its assistance to the contras, and did not constitute an ''armed attack'' on these countries under international law. As a result, the United States' response was judged disproportionate and unnecessary.

The Court said the United States was responsible in a general way for damage caused by the contras but not for specific acts by the rebels since it does not control them.

It also said the United States has no right to seek the overthrow of the Nicaraguan Government because of its political ideology. But to the surprise of some lawyers, it then added that this doctrine does not apply to ''the process of decolonization,'' suggesting that wars of national liberation may be justified in international law. Nicaraguan Leader Comments

The Nicaraguan Foreign Minister, the Rev. Miguel d'Escoto Brockmann, said he hoped the United States Congress would now agree to stop new aid going to the contras. ''We want the U.S. to comply with the ruling so that there will be no more killing of our people,'' he told a news conference here.

If the United States fails to respect the judgment, Father D'Escoto said, its ''reputation as a member of the international community will be tarnished, perhaps irreparably.''

The Foreign Minister said he would discuss the verdict with the United Nations Secretary General, Javier Perez de Cuellar, in New York next week before returning to Nicaragua for talks with the other leaders of the Government on their next move in the dispute.

Although the World Court lacks the means to enforce its judgments, diplomats here say Nicaragua can still use today's ruling to cause the United States some diplomatic embarrassment. This could first occur in a demand that the Security Council authorize sanctions against the United States if it fails to comply. The United States would then be forced to exercise its Security Council veto to block the Nicaraguan resolution. Charges of Bias in Court

The United States walked out of the Court proceedings last year, saying they were biased in favor of Nicaragua.

In announcing that it did not recognize the Court's jurisdiction in January 1985, the Reagan Administration noted that the Soviet Union and most other nations had never assented to the World Court's jurisdiction, as the United States did in 1946.

But the World Court proceeded with the Nicaragua case, in accordance with its rules, as it did when Iran refused to recognize its jurisdiction in the United States' suit over the seizure in 1979 of American diplomats in Teheran as hostages. The Court ruled for the United States in that case.

The Nicaraguan case is widely seen by legal scholars as the most politically sensitive the World Court has ever adjudicated as well as representing its first involvement in an international conflict that is still under way.

The Court's verdict on most key issues was challenged by Judge Stephen M. Schwebel of the United States, Sir Robert Jennings, the British judge, and Judge Shigeru Oda of Japan. A Jurisdictional Challenge

The dissenting judges first challenged the Court's competence to hear the case. The issue was whether the Court could hear the case since the United States specifically refused it authority in 1946 over cases brought under international treaties. Nicaragua claims the United States violated its international obligations under the United Nations and Organization of American States charters.

A majority of judges said this restriction applies but argued that the principles of noninterference in other countries' affairs and respect for national sovereignty, which are enshrined in the United Nations charter, have now become part of the wider body of customary international law.

The Court, the majority ruled, is therefore competent to judge.

Judge Oda argued that the dispute was not ''legal'' but ''political'' and is ''more suitable for resolution by other organs and procedures.'' Lawyers said this suggested that Judge Oda believed the dispute should be judged by the Security Council.

Judge Schwebel's dissent emphasized that the Court had underestimated the gravity of the Nicaraguan Government's involvement in El Salvador.

''Nicaragua has not come to court with clean hands,'' Judge Schwebel said. ''On the contrary, as an aggressor, indirectly responsible - but ultimately responsible - for large numbers of deaths and widespread destruction in El Salvador, apparently much exceeding that which Nicaragua has sustained, Nicaragua's hands are odiously unclean. Nicaragua has compounded its sins by misrepresenting them in court.''

Source: New York Times

US dismisses World Court ruling on contras

The International Court of Justice yesterday ruled that US support to the contras in Nicaragua is illegal, and demanded that the US pay reparations to the Sandinistas.

Nicaragua intends to sue the US for more than dollars 1 billion in damages in US domestic courts as a result of yesterday's World Court ruling, a legal counsel for the Managua Government said yesterday in Washington.

In a 16-point ruling on a complaint lodged by Nicaragua , the judges rejected American claims of collective self-defence and found the US guilty of breaches of international law and the 1956 treaty of friendship between the two countries.

Three judges submitted dissenting opinions: Judge Oda (Japan), Judge Schwebel (US) and Sir Robert Jennings (Britain).
The US rejected the judgment, claiming that the Managua regime is a Soviet puppet.

A Soviet judge did not take part in the case. One judge was withdrawn last August and was only replaced in December - too late to join his 14 colleagues, plus the ad hoc judge added to the court to represent Nicaragua .

The Sandinistas had appealed to the World Court in April, 1984, to condemn American intervention, but the US has always maintained that the court's jurisdiction did not extend to ruling on this issue. The US does recognise the jurisdiction of the court in many other cases, such as the 1984 ruling on the Bay of Maine dispute with Canada.
In its verdict, the court stated that US acts and actions in training and financing the contras, the attack on Puerto Sandino and interference with maritime commerce constituted breaches of international law and the obligation not to violate national sovereignty.

The court argued that the two parties should negotiate on the level and type of reparations, but that if agreement could not be reached, the court would determine compensation at a later date.
The US benches were empty when the court announced its decision. Among the Nicaraguan delegates was the Foreign Minister, Father Miguel d'Escoto, who said he hoped that the verdict would help the Americans to re-evaluate their position and stop defying the law and the court.
Dutch legal experts argue that the decision is legally binding on the US, despite the American refusal to recognise the court's jurisdiction. One said: 'The USA has always recognised the ICJ. It should have changed its position earlier if it wanted to duck the court in this case. 'It is a well-known principle of international law that, if a country submits to the jurisdiction of a court, it cannot sidestep the court after the judges have started their work,' a professor of international law at Amsterdam University said.

WASHINGTON - In an initial reaction - the 400 pages of the ruling have yet to be digested - the State Department spokesman, Mr Charles Redman, said that the court's decision demonstrated that it was not equipped to deal with a case of such a complex nature.

Mr Redman said that the US and Nicaragua agreed that international law was not the issue but the facts of-the case, whether one accepted the US or Nicaraguan version of events. Both the Administration and Congress - on the basis of intelligence information not made available to the court - concluded that Nicaragua had launched unprovoked and unlawful attacks on its neighbours, he said.

At the same time, the US said that the latest crackdown in Nicaragua against the opposition was not unexpected and condemned the measures announced by President Daniel Ortega. 'We are deeply concerned at the welfare of the civilian opposition,' Mr Redman said.

Congressional sources opposed to Mr Reagan's policy said the Nicaraguan crackdown demonstrated that the Administration policy of trying to open up the political system had failed.

Source: The Guardian

US guilty of backing Contras

The United States has been found guilty of violating international law by supporting armed Contra rebels in Nicaragua. The International Court of Justice ruled that the US should compensate the country, although it has not yet fixed an amount.

But the Reagan administration has boycotted the case and says it will ignore the verdict of the United Nations court. In the US there have been demonstrations against a vote by Congress in favour of aid to the Contras. About 40 people were arrested during a protest in Minneapolis, and in Cleveland a group of demonstrators lay on the pavement to block the entrance to the federal building.

The UN court found the US guilty of contravening law by training, arming and financing paramilitary activities in and against Nicaragua. These activities included the laying of mines in Nicaraguan waters in early 1984, as well as attacking a naval base and patrol boats.

The court held, by 12 votes to three, that the US was "in breach of its obligations under customary international law not to use force against another State, not to intervene in its affairs, not to violate its sovereignty and not to interrupt peaceful maritime commerce". It ruled the US was under an obligation "to make reparation to the Republic of Nicaragua for all injury caused" by the breaches.

Source BBC

Magoo’s Bar Bombed

The gruesome scene outside Magoo's Bar in Durban after the bomb went off killing three women pedestrians and wounding many bar patrons.

Source: IoL

Liberian Leader Pardons 34 Accused in Plot

Liberia's President, Gen. Samuel K. Doe, announced today that he had pardoned 34 people accused of conspiring to overthrow the Government. The Liberian Information Ministry said General Doe granted "a complete and unconditional pardon to all persons implicated and detained after the failed coup of Nov. 12, 1985."

Among those pardoned was Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, a prominent opposition politician and former Citibank vice president whose case drew substantial attention in the United States. In a broadcast, General Doe said the pardon was an "act of mercy" to show "that we harbor no evil intention against any of our citizens, including those who may wish us ill."

Source: New York Times

SOVIET ANNOUNCES NUCLEAR ACCIDENT AT ELECTRIC PLANT

The Soviet Union announced today that there had been an accident at a nuclear power plant in the Ukraine and that ''aid is being given to those affected.'' The severity of the accident, which spread discernable radioactive material over Scandinavia, was not immediately clear. But the terse statement, distributed by the Tass press agency and read on the evening television news, suggested a major accident.

The phrasing also suggested that the problem had not been brought under full control at the nuclear plant, which the Soviet announcement identified as the Chernobyl station. It is situated at the new town of Pripyat, near Chernobyl and 60 miles north of Kiev. The announcement, the first official disclosure of a nuclear accident ever by the Soviet Union, came hours after Sweden, Finland and Denmark reported abnormally high radioactivity levels in their skies. The readings initially led those countries to think radioactive material had been leaking from one of their own reactors.

The Soviet announcement, made on behalf of the Council of Ministers, after Sweden had demanded information, said in its entirety: ''An accident has occurred at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant as one of the reactors was damaged. Measures are being taken to eliminate the consequences of the accident. Aid is being given to those affected. A Government commission has been set up.'' The mention of a commission of inquiry reinforced indications that the accident was a serious one. United States experts said the accident probably posed no danger outside the Soviet Union. But in the absence of detailed information, they said it would be difficult to determine the gravity, and they said environmental damage might conceivably be disastrous. The Chernobyl plant, with four 1,000-megawatt reactors in operation, is one of the largest and oldest of the 15 or so Soviet civilian nuclear stations. Nuclear power has been a matter of high priority in the Soviet Union, and capacity has been going into service as fast as reactors can be built. Pripyat, where the Chernobyl plant is situated, is a settlement of 25,000 to 30,000 people that was built in the 1970's along with the station. It is home to construction workers, service personnel and their families. A British reporter returning from Kiev reported seeing no activity in the Ukrainian capital that would suggest any alarm. No other information was immediately available from the area. But reports from across Scandinavia, areas more than 800 miles to the north, spoke of increases in radioactivity over the last 24 hours.

Scandinavian authorities said the radioactivity levels did not pose any danger, and it appeared that only tiny amounts of radioactive material had drifted over Scandinavia. All of it was believed to be in the form of two relatively innocuous gases, xenon and krypton. Scandinavian officials said the evidence pointed to an accident in the Ukraine. In Sweden, an official at the Institute for Protection Against Radiation said gamma radiation levels were 30 to 40 percent higher than normal. He said that the levels had been abnormally high for 24 hours and that the release seemed to be continuing. In Finland, officials were reported to have said readings in the central and northern areas showed levels six times higher than normal. The Norwegian radio quoted pollution control officials as having said that radioactivity in the Oslo area was 50 percent higher. Since morning, Swedish officials had focused on the Soviet Union as the probable source of the radioactive material, but Swedish Embassy officials here said the Soviet authorities had denied knowledge of any problem until the Government announcement was read on television at 9 P.M.

The first alarm was raised in Sweden when workers arriving at the Forsmark nuclear power station, 60 miles north of Stockholm, set off warnings during a routine radioactivity check. The plant was evacuated, Swedish officials said. When other nuclear power plants reported similar happenings, the authorities turned their attention to the Soviet Union, from which the winds were coming. A Swedish diplomat here said he had telephoned three Soviet Government agencies - the State Committee for Utilization of Atomic Energy, the Ministry of Electric Power and the three-year-old State Committee for Safety in the Atomic Power Industry -asking them to explain the high readings over Scandinavia. All said they had no explanation, the diplomat said. Before the Soviet acknowledgment, the Swedish Minister of Energy, Birgitta Dahl, said that whoever was responsible for the spread of radioactive material was not observing international agreements requiring warnings and exchanges of information about accidents.

Tass, the Soviet Government press agency, said the Chernobyl accident was the first ever in a Soviet nuclear power plant. It was the first ever acknowledged by the Russians, but Western experts have reported at least two previous mishaps. In 1957, a nuclear waste dump believed related to weapons production was reported to have resulted in a chemical reaction in the Kasli areas of the Urals, causing damage to the environment and possibly fatalities. In 1974, a steam line exploded in the Shevchenko nuclear breeder plant in Kazakhstan, but no radioactive material is believed to have been released in that accident. Soviet authorities, in giving the development of nuclear electricity generation a high priority, have said that nuclear power is safe. In the absence of citizens' opposition to nuclear power, there has been virtually no questioning of the program. The terse Soviet announcement of the Chernobyl accident was followed by a Tass dispatch noting that there had been many mishaps in the United States, ranging from Three Mile Island outside Harrisburg, Pa., to the Ginna plant near Rochester. Tass said an American antinuclear group registered 2,300 accidents, breakdowns and other faults in 1979. The practice of focusing on disasters elsewhere when one occurs in the Soviet Union is so common that after watching a report on Soviet television about a catastrophe abroad, Russians often call Western friends to find out whether something has happened in the Soviet Union.

Construction of the Chernobyl plant began in the early 1970's and the first reactor was commissioned in 1977. Work has been lagging behind plans. In April 1983, the Ukrainian Central Committee chastised the Chernobyl plant, along with the Rovno nuclear power station at Kuznetsovsk, for ''inferior quality of construction and installation work and low operating levels.'' Donald T. Regan, the White House chief of staff, said today that the United States was willing to provide medical and scientific assistance to the Soviet Union in connection with the nuclear accident but so far there had been no such request.

Source: New York Times