Battles in readiness for peace'

existence, National BY A FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT A BITTEF : struggle for territory is going on in South Vietnam as the possibility of a cease-fire agreement again looms.

The corrupt and brutal regime of Nguyen Van Thieu, fighting for its has issued orders to wipe out the Liberation Front after a cease fire.

New laws give police and soldiers the right to shoot on sight anyone suspected of rebellion. Defecting soldiers and civilians can be summarily executed. The use of banknotes issued by the NLF brings an automatic death sentence.

Thousands of political opponents are being tortured and massacred in Thieu's jails and more ares are be least sail poitical prisonina en arrests are denne mace a tre ameris estimated South Vietnam.

A cease fire will bring no let up in the struggle until the Thieu regime is swept away.

The North Vietnamese and the NLF have continued to make progress in the ground fighting and now hold more territory than they did at the time of the abortive October peace agreement. Other areas, while no longer firmly under their control, cannot be claimed by Saigon either.

Heavy fighting has been going on in the area south of the demilitarized zone where the South Vietnamese have been trying to extend their holdings of territory. In the fighting around the Michelin rubber plantations 35 miles north of Saigon, South Vietnamese units have been badly mauled.

Small NLF guerrilla units have been moving into many parts of the country in anticipation of a cease fire, forming nuclei of control from which they can fan out later. • Top negotiators Dr Henry Kissinger and North Vietnam Politburo member Le Duc Tho met in Paris: for crucial talks yesterday. The South Money talks set three targets Vietnamese Poreign Minister Tran Van Lam and Madam Nguyen Thi Binh, the NLF Foreign Minister, also arrived in Paris.

AS THE disintegration of the European currencies Spain reaches reached a further stage, top international monetary • experts yesterday began three-day meeting in Paris to discuss reform of the for Market monetary system.

Known as the Committee of 20 Deputies', this THE PRESIDENT of the National Council of specialist panel will consider: Employers in Spain, Manuel Conde Bandres, has given his full support to the integration of role of gold.

Spain into the Common Market. huge volume He emphasized that the fulfilment of the European personPresident who ality' of Spain meant the intensification of corporatism within Spanish factories.

at a Thereater is gration ust the couldn't crush molecialon worker in the Tactory. Tine eradication of labour absenteeism fomented by 'reforms in Social Security', and the strike Vietnam weapon, which he described as a 'primitive form of coercion'.

His audience of Valencian employers hardly needed this encouragement from Bandres to step up their attacks on the illegal US President who died on independent organizations of the aged 64, will go down in Spanish working class. man who tried and failed Their prize could be the huge Ford or Toyota factories planned Vietnamese revolution. for Spain. Johnson was responThe United States Steel sible for the faked-up Corporation is already involved Tonkin Gulf Incident in top-level negotiations with August 1964the exSpanish Minister of Industry cuse for a massive inLopez de Letona aimed at build- flux of US ground ing an ultra-modern plant in troaps into South VietSagunto in Valencia province. nam and for bombing The Government Office for the North.

Foreign Investment reports that A Texan machine foreign investment in Spainpolitician who was shot more than 50 per cent of capital Into prominence by the in different projects—amounted assassination of Presito 900 million pesetas in 1972.

This only represents the invest- dent John F. Kennedy, Johnson set out to be ment officially authorized by the come the conqueror of regime. Indo-China using the 40 per cent of the capital was the full might of the US from Switzerland (1971, 14 per military machine. cent); 37 per cent from the By 1968, however, the United States, (1971, 15 per cent);

famous Tet offensive of per cent. from the United the Vietnamese liberaKingdom (1971, 11 per cent); 8 tion armies had desper cent from West Germany troyed Johnson politi(1971, 22 per cent); 5 per cent cally and reduced his from France (1971, 10.5 per cent).

The European personality of milltary strategy to a Franco's regime seems to be quite shambles. flexible from the rapid increase The President was in US investment in Spain over forced to stand down the last year!

IN, the former Monday night history as the to crush the at the 1968 presidential election and make way for his deputy Hubert Humphrey, who was decisively beaten at the polls.

Johnson's counterrevolutionary record in Indo-China earned him the hatred of millions all over the world.

In the last days of his presidency he did not dare venture out in public, but Instead travelled from one army base to another.

Vietnam was not Johnson's only ImperialIst adventure.

In 1965 he sent 20,000 Marines to the Dominican Republic to suppress a revolt against the extreme right-wing litary rulers. unwanted dollars choking the world monetary system.

to bring about foreign exhange adjustments.

The discussions will continue the acute divisions not only between the Americans and the Europeans, but also among the Europeans themselves.

President Nixon's measures of August 15, 1971, ending dollar conSigning civil He later boasted that his intervention there had saved the Caribbean from going the same way as Cuba.

At home, Johnson liked to pose as a re former, on the basis of his 'civil rights' logislation.

But his White House term saw the massive race riots in Detroit and other citles, fuelled by heavy. unemployment and sharp rises in the cost of living.

Long before he became President, Johnson earned an unenviable reputation for graft and arm-twisting.

He narrowly avoided an untimely end to his political career when his protege Bobby vertibility have been 1 followed by a whole series such meetings, none which has been able make any progress.

Against a background of lira devaluation and the floating of the Swiss franc, this meeting will be no exception.

It is chaired by Jeremy Morse, former executive director of the Bank of England. rights BIll, 1968 Baker was imprisoned for corruption.

Johnson built up a multi-million dollar fortune in the course of his 37 years in Democratic Party politics.

He leaves a huge ranch, an Important commercial radio station and other big business interests.

It is particularly fitting that Ngo Cao Ky of South Vietnam, should describe the deceased as 'a combatant who had contributed his efforts alongside the Vietnamese people'.

This tribute-(rom one bankrupt butcher (and admirer of Hitler, to boot to another of the same type-just about puts Johnson in perspective.