FREE ABU

DAUD KING HUSSEIN of Jordan has confirmed death sentences against Abu Daud, a leader of the Al Fatah commandos, and other Palestinian resistance fighters. Abu Daud was captured early in February with other Fatah members while on his way to the Israeli-occupied territories to organize resistance against the Zionist invader. He was brought before a secret military court within 24 hours of his arrest and summarily sentenced. on trumped-up charges of plotting against state Abu Daud is one of the tinian resistance fighters. founders of Al Fatah and volutionary council of the movement.

Hussein is the man who massacred: the Pales-. tinian guerrilla fighters in September 1970. To make a rotten peace with Israel he is bent on destroying every Palestinian who sets out to. resist Zionism. At the same time his regime hypocritically protests against the killing in Khartoum of two US diplomats known to have played a part in the September 1970 massacre of Palestinians.

Abu Daud and his comrades are to be murdered by the Royal butcher of Jordan in order to cement his ties with Washington and Tel Aviv. The world labour movement cannot remain silent in the face of this new crime against the Arab revolútion. The Socialist Labour League demands the immediate and unconditional release of Abu Daud and his comrades and an end to the reign of terror against Palestinians in Jordan.

Action is urgent to save the lives of these anti-imperialist fighters. Resolutions and letters of protest should be sent to the Jordanian Embassy, 6 Upper Philimore Gardens, London W8. most prominent Palesa member of the re Palestinian liberation RULING Gaullist in France faces a desperate struggle over the coming week to save FOREIGN exchange markets will be closed all this week as Finance Ministers of the capitalist countries hold a series of meetings in a desperate attempt to patch up what they all agree can only be a temporary and unstable solution to the monetary crisis.

The Common Market Finance Ministers had to admit defeat after seven hours of talks on Sunday. They could find no European solution' to the crisis.

And, as the "Sunday Telegraph' put it on March 4: 'The really worrying thing about this crisis is that the currency experts appear to be running out of solutions.

'Fixed rates have been tried, they worked in their time until their time was over. Then floating, in the teeth of violent opposition, became acceptable and even respectable. Two-tiers subsequently cropped • up and were absorbed. Now, with everyone either floating or two-tiering, what next?' The situation is now so uncertain that even the United States government is divided over what action it should support. Dr Arthur Burns, the chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, favours a rapid return to fixed currency rates because he fears a joint European float would involve controls over the export of US capital which would be detrimental to US interests.

On the other hand, Treasury Secretary George Schultz sees no reason why the United States should not accept a Common Market float which he thinks would be a step towards a 'more flexible monetary system'.

This disagreement in Washington mirrors the panic and fear running through the international ruling class. The crisis of its system is now completely out of control: Finance Ministers are paralysed by the enormity and scope of the crisis.

Plans for a joint European float against the dollar foundered on opposition from France and Italy: still facing the second round of its National Assembly election, the Gaullist government preferred • to leave the issue in abeyance for this week.

The Italians, by contrast, made it clear they had no confidence in the idea of a joint float and instead put forward a plan for a leisurely progress towards a joint float by easy stages. They supported the conditions which Tory Chancellor Anthony Barber wanted as a condition for taking part in a joint float.

These included that each country be allowed to enter the arrangement at an acceptable exchange rate; that each should have the • 'unimpaired right' to change its rate after consultations with the other members; that there must be financial support 'the most far-reaching kind', all nine countries supporting their partners 'without limits of amount, without conditions and without obligation to repay'.

These demands are, of course, quite Utopian and reflect the extremely weak position of the Tory government in the face of its EEC 'partners'. The latter want sterling firmly tied to their own currencies precisely in order to put an end to the trading advantages the British employers gain by their creeping devaluation.

They will certainly not be prepared to bleed their own reserves white to support sterling, but will instead force the Tory government to adopt savagely deflationary polices, throwing the cost of the joint float onto the backs of the British working class.

This is the background to the measures Barber will announce today and in a possible second budget. The British capitalists, having thrown in their lot with the Common Market employers to fight the European workers will have no option but to toe whatever line is laid down by West Germany and France.

The lack of any other way out for the employers internationally must speed up the on going flight from paper money, The lesson is being driven into the skulls of capitalists everywhere that only gold has value. The metal they previously scorned has become the most sought-after of all commodities and with the foreign exchanges closed the gold price must rise.

The 'Financial Times' yesterday expressed the growing fear in capitalist circles of a collapse of world trade: 'Up to last week, the succession of monetary crises had by and large left world trade unaffected. Governments and central banks cobbled and mended in the hope that enough time could be gained to work out a new and lasting "They have consistently underestimated the magnitude of the forces involved and the speed at which events were likely to move. More important even than that, they have failed to appreciate that there is a limit to confidence. The latest crisis has demonstrated that we have come very close to this limit.' Particularly significant, the paper says, is the fact that not only is gold rising in price, but there is a 'scramble into commodities, reflecting at least the start of a flight out of mney [which] does affect industry and the consumer directly'.

The threat to world trade, it says, has become a real one, and it calls on governments to 'ensure that when markets open officially again, the atmosphere of tear and hysteria 1s banished once and for all.

This, as the BEC Finance Ministers' gathering demonstrated, is now beyond the powers