The grand deception

THE TALKS in Washington between President Nixon and Soviet Communist Party chief Leonid Brezhnev are an organized deception of the people. Brezhnev does not represent or speak for the Soviet people any more than Nixon does for the ordinary people of the United States.

Brezhnev represents the privileged caste of bureaucrats which usurped political power from the Soviet workers under Stalin. Nixon is the leader, for the moment, of the world's largest and richest imperialist power.

Brezhnev claims that Nixon 'won the confidence of the American people when he was elected for a second term and his line in international relations is one that merits profound respect'.

Nixon's line in international relations, in fact, is outrightly and unashamedly counter-revolutionary: For five bloody years his air force has blasted and bombarded Indo-China and is even now raining bombs on the Cambodian workers and peasants.

Nixon actively maintains and supports a string of military dictatorships around the world in Latin America, the Mediterranean, Middle East, Africa and Asia.

Among his client states are fascist Spain, the colonels' Greece, Brazil, Iran, Indonesia and Thailand, all ruled by ferociously anti-communist dictators. Brezhnev says he 'merits profound respect!

Nixon is discredited by the Watergate scandal and is fighting a losing battle to cling to office as his former aides turn against him.

Nixon's line in domestic affairs -revealed in the bugging burglary and secret surveillance of a morale mang stack oh. Watergate- concentrated, hasic democratic rchs The postponement of Watergate hearings during The obscene Street praise Brezhnev visit is only a temporary reprieve for the President.

Had the hearings continued— with the most explosive testimony yet heard in the inquiry due this week-Nixon might well have claimed they were sabotaging the national interest.

In fact the Soviet leader has already announced that he will not make an issue of Watergate during the talks. It would, he told newsmen before he left Moscow, be 'completely indecent' to mention it.

Brezhnev looks on Nixon with 'very great respect' because 'he has taken a realistic and constructive approach to relations between our two countries ... passing from an era of confrontation to an era of negotiations between nations'.

Both leaders paid tribute Leonid's laugh-in antics of Brezhner won full Fleet yesterday. each other's 'peace-loving' qualities when Brezhnev arrived at the White House. But behind the honeyed Phrases is the preparation counter-revolutionary blows against the international working class. That why secrecy is essential - and has been defended by Nixon himself on the grounds that otherwise detente would be impossible.

The summit has been carefully prepared in advance by extensive secret negotiations between Soviet leaders and Nixon's envoy Dr Henry Kissinger at the politburo's luxury hunting lodge at Zavidovo on the Volga.

At these talks basic agreement was reached on a package of deals to be signed in Washington, among them pacts on scientific co-operation, joint farming research, undersea surveying, cultural exchanges and taxation will be the question of stri will be the question of strategic arms limitations, on which arms limitations, on which, US officials said they were 'optimistic' officials said they were 'optin there would be progress.

The Soviet bureaucracy is driven to seek closer ties with imperialism by its own economic and political crisis.

The stagnation of Soviet agriculture, combined with the failure to meet industrial planning targets, has forced Brezhnev to seek capital for investment from abroad.

Last year's huge grain purchases from the United States, Canada and Australia left the USSR with a very large balanceof-payments deficit at a time when industry is lagging behind the planned targets.

The opening up of the Soviet Union to US capital endangers the nationalized property relations, the monopoly of foreign trade and all the conquests of the October revolution.

More important, despite all the talk about peaceful co-existence from the Stalinists, their concessions to imperialism cannot ensure peace with world capitalism.

On the contrary, allowing the big western monopolies to nibble at the vast mineral and energy resources of Siberia can only whet their appetite for more.

What they cannot get peacefully, they will plan and prepare to take by force.

CUBAN newspapers have reported the Nixon-Brezhney talks without spelling out the President's name—which they usually do by putting a swastika in it.

A brief item in the evening newspaper "Juventud Rebelde' simply reported the Soviet leader had arrived in the United States for talks with 'the US President'. save

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