Yugoslav purge starts

A MAJOR purge of the Yugoslav League of Communists has been set in motion by its leadership following top-level consultations with President It is intended to bring to an end months of political and economic crisis which have racked the Balkan workers' state.

Jure Bilic, a member of the League's presidium, went on television at the end of last week to tell viewers: 'We shall rid our ranks of all who do not consistently carry out the party's policies.

'I hold this purge necessary. despite the fact that this word has an undertone of an administrative, bureaucratic and even despotic way of settling things.' Detailed criteria for carrying out the purge have not been released publicily, but they have already been circulated to provincial party organizations.

It has already been made clear that the victims of nuTOP thill be sacked from then the administration in addition to being stripped of their party membership.

As Bilic implied, the purge is indeed a bureaucratic attempt to find a way out of the chronic problems that beset Tito's regime.

In his television broadcast, Bilic went straight to the heart of the matter. He warned against the 'dangerous tendency of turning social into private property' and stressed that this tendency was particularly marked in foreign trade.

He referred in particular to the excessive number of Yugoslav enterprises abroad: in West Germany alone, he said, there were 800 such enterprises, 400 of which had been set up in the last 12 months.

Bilic said it was a fact that the Yugoslav government had Tito leadership caught between imperialism and practically no knowledge of these developments. 'This is the result of the market economy;' he said.

The outcome was that individuals were amassing capital in a way that would have been impossible had they been in ordinary employment. Public protest, he said, was "justifiable".

Individuals abroad had foreignexchange accounts. Cases of individuals acquiring enormous' resources through commissions on import deals were not infrequent.

Bilic said it was 'most incumbent' on a socialist self-managing society by its very nature to resist such manifestations by Troops used in Latin American THE COLOMBIAN government has decided to maintain its state of siege for an indefinite period. This siege is aimed at opposition from students and guerrillas.

Minister of the Interior, Abelardo Benavides, in a message to the House of Representatives over the weekend, asserted that the government had an obligation to 'keep order and take all steps to preserve it'.

Since the beginning of June, over 96 people have been arrested and tortured on charges of being urban defenders of the Castroite National Liberation Army.

OVER 20,000 men Brazilian armed forces are being transferred to the uppe • Araguaia valley to reinforce th e region's ,000 troops. It is al out 1,200 liles from Brasilia.

There are reports workers at home every means possible. ment of regulations hac the rule, he said.

Unless swift and effective measures were taken, it could be that individuals would acquire too much wealth, become 'overbearing' and 'domineering' and begin • to alter the system of social relationships.

Bilic called for 'swift and effective action' against these trends. But what effective action can be taken while the Tito leadership itself undermines the basis of the workers' state by introducing the 'market economy' and undermining the monopoly of foreign trade?

fighting between the army and peasants who are being thrown from their land by a 'consortium of big landowners, backed by US finance, interested in exploiting the possible mineral resources in the area.

IN TINY court-room at Fort Ord near Monterey, California, is Army tribunal trying the first "fragging' case to be heard on American soil.

In the dock is Billy Dean Smith (23), a black private and Vietnam veteran accused of killing two officers and injuring others with fragmentation grenades.

These are the preInfringebecome Frame-up fragging case in the US ferred weapons of GIs in Vietnam who want to rid themselves of unpopular officers. There have been hundreds of cases of 'fragging' since the Vietnam war began.

There is no direct evidence against Smith, beyond the fact that a grenade pin was found in his pocket after GIs in Vietnar monly carry 1 Purges, trials and lengthy speeches are powerless to combat the economic weight of imperialism. This is the decisive factor which the Yugoslav Stalinists choose to ignore.

The Tito regime has opened the door to foreign capital, is in the process of making the dinar convertible and has abandoned — as Bilic admitted — virtually all state control over transactions with the west.

While Bilic was speaking on television, the government was preparing for talks with the Common Market countries to extend the present trading agreement to include industrial cooperation, joint investments of capital and joint appearances on third markets.

With the. economy running more and more out of its control the Tito leadership is caught between the pressure of imperialism and the growing layer of wealthy Yugoslavs on the one hand and the anger of the workers on the other.

Whatever political capital it possessed with the workers and peasants is being rapidly frittered away by the bureaucracy, laying the basis for civil war in Yugoslavia.

revolts A military plane has machine-gunned four workers building the Trans-Amazon highway.

In comşrenade pins with them or use them to decorate their hats.

The trial is being conducted under intensive military security.

All spectators are carefully checked by armed guards and their names and units (if they are military personnel) noted down.

The courtroom is a tiny building which can hold only 50 people, but South. the army is deliberately restricting the number in the court to 35. The atmosphere, according to GIs on the Fort : Ord base, is heavy with the smell of frame-up.

The charges carry the death penalty and it is clear the army wants a scapegoat for the failure of its Vietnam policy and the collapse of Gl morale.