COMRADES, IT'S COLD INSIDE

As the long East Euro. pean winter closes in, the people of Warsaw are already shivering at the thought of how the state heating system - notoriously prone to major breakdowns — will funcEvery year the Polish capital's central heating network suffers failures, but this year officials are making even gloomier predictions, raising the spectre of cold homes and work-places.

Nearly all buildings are supplied with central heating from the miles of pipes which make up the vast network. The basic problem is that large sections of pipes need replacing urgently, while the two stations cannot meet the growing demands of the city.

To make matters worse, the municipal heating company has difficulty in pumping hot water to the higher storeys of the big blocks of flats in which most of Warsaw's 1.3 million people live.

The outlook, groaned one leading Warsaw daily, recalled the fate of Sisyphus, the mythical Greek figure condemned forever to roll a stone to the top of a steep hill, only to it roll down again ous task once more.

'Now all the errors committed in the construction of power stations and heating pipes are being revealed. It shows how disastrous are the consecutices of using cut-price technology, materials and equipment, declared the daily 'Slowo Powszechne'.

As a result flats, hospitals and kindergartens will almost certainly be underheated again. Although the winter heating season has only just started, newspapers have received flood of complaining letters from exasperated tenants.

The two-year-old regime of Communist Party leader Edward Gierek, who took over after workers' riots over food price increases, has already started building new heating plants but these will take at least another year to complete.

Meanwhile the company lays the blame at the door of the plants, which are short of stokers and equipment. Plant managers angrily retort that the company is the real villain since its pipes do not work properly.

The wide-bore pipes, mainly of concrete and asbestos, were aid down within the last five years and were hailed as the ideal solution at the time since they were considered cheap and efficient a claim now universally scoffed at.

Even the anti-breakdown service broke down recently, complained the Communist Party daily "Trybuna Ludu', adding that it was properly understanding how checked equipment works for a mere two weeks' in Warsaw.

Failures are a serious headache for most householders who rely almost completely on Chilean President Salvador Allende is making the most of his dispute with the US-owned Kennecott Copper Company to enforce rigorous new economy measures on the country.

A French tribunal has ALLENDE X the country's economic crisis.

Speaking , in Valvidia last week the President said very hard times were ahead for Chile: 'First there was the fall in the price of copper, then the US banks cut our lines of credit, after that the international banks made trouble and now we face embargoes . . ?

Hard times have already complete bankruptcy of the Popular Unity government—a coalition of social-democrats, Stalinists and liberals. The Allende government came to office in 1970 on the basis of promises to lead the country along the 'peaceful road' to socialism.

Now his stand is endorsed on nationalistic grounds even by the right-wing Santiago press, including 'El Mercurio', the regime's most consistent critic from the right. The papers are full of cartoons denouncing American 'piracy' and praising Allende's position.

But it would be a dangerous deception to consider that the Kennecott affair has really