Release Liu Sar Qing

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launched last autumn in the aftermath of the Israeli invasion of Lebanon. It was based on the belief that the profound military and political setback the invasion inflicted on the PLO and their allies in the Lebanese left could create conditións to force humiliating concessions from the PLO Icadership as well as the most pro-imperialist Arab regimes.

As one State Department official said at the time:

'We believe the time has come to stop talking about talking about peace and start sitting down at the table, negotiating directly between Israelis and Arabs and the United States.".

But this cynical scenario left out the fact that these three points of view on the situation in the Middle East, though united in seeking to contain the explosive Palestinian issue, are otherwise divided.

Begin's Zionist government was fully supported by the imperialists when it launched its massive invasion of Lebanon. But its interests in the Middle East are not identical to those of Washington. Begin is less interested in placating the Arab regimes than in intimidating them, and less interested in a negotiated settlement than in holding on to the occupied. West Bank and Gaza Strip, which he terms "Judea and Samaria"

Begin therefore flatly rejected Reagan's plan, and has done everything possible to sabotage it - from maintaining the 30,000strong Zionist army of occupation to stoke up tension in Lebanon to oncouraging a new rash of settlements on the West Bank.

From another side of this three-cornered table, the Arab leaders have not been simply free agents to make the deal they would wish to make with the Zionists and with imperialism. They have had to reckon with the political opposition to a sell-out from the Palestinians themselves - whose pressure for a hard line have produced evident splits and other voices of "moderation" to use their financial and political leverage to force the PLO into making concessions - the most important of which was that they empower King Hussein of Jordan to negotiate on their behalf in the cobbling together of a deal.

At present every Arab regime with the exception of Egypt has acknowledged the PLO as the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people - thus effectively handing them a veto.

Hussein himself had been offered US military aid and hardware if he would act as an imperialist stooge in some form talks: and it appeared that the arm-twisting was having its effect until an abrupt shift of position by the PLO - demanding that they be physically present at negotiations - made it plain that his "" participation. would be a meaningless gesture. The scheme had collapsed.

It appears that a decisive factor in the PLO position was their well-founded scepticism that Reagan - or any other US President — could or seriously wished to force any concessions out of Begin.

But if they have escaped an immediate. top-level sell-out, the Palestinian people still face immense political pressures from their self-styled "friends" in the Arab governments.

Their alternative "peace plan' drawn up in the Moroccan capital of Fez last autumn implicitly recognises the long term existence of the Zionist state by calling only for Israeli withdrawal to the pre-1967 borders.

And its references to an 'independent Palestinian state" with Jerusalem as its capital therefore point to some form of tokenistic ghetto "mini-state" which can by no means secure the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination or to return to their country.

As Reagan and his political sympathisers seek to refloat some form of initiative in the Middle "We are not doing anything to overthrow the Nicaraguan Government", claimed a straight-faced Ronald Reagan at a news conference on April 14.

And, despite the murderous activities of CIA-backed guerrillas committed to the overthrow of Nicaragua's Sandinista government, despite the clandestine military moves against Nicaragua sponsored by US agencies in Costa Rica, despite the economic sabotage of Nicaragua spearheaded by US imperialism, in a sense Reagan is right.

He knows - and cynically admitted - that the small numbers of counter-revolutionary guerrillas (known as 'contras') could not hope to overturn the Sandinista regime, which rests on wide measure of popular support, coupled with a large army, a larger militia, and the political backing of the Cuban bureaucracy.

Contras

The raids and killings by the contras - who include large numbers of the hated former National Guard of Nicaraguan dictator Somoza - are intended both to harass the Sandinistas creating favourable conditions for By All this is in line with the top secret document from Reagan's National Security Council recently published by the New York Times, which shows Reagan last April approving a policy of covert and political action to prevent a "proliferation of Cuba-model states in Central America."

A flavour of the covert activity planned could be gauged from the fact that the same meeting gave its approval to the coup that installed Guatemala's bloody "born again" dictator General Rios Montt, and allocated. $2.5 million to CiA activity in Guatemala.

The political action has consisted primarily of twisting the arms of the Mexican government, attempting to press gang them into • withdrawing their support from the left wing forces in fl to the US for talks on ated solution to the war.

It is not so much the : «sonable' line and diplomatic attitude of the FDR but rather the weakness of the Salvadorean military in the face of the FMLN struggle and the revelation of the extent of CIA involvement in Nicaraguan raids which have persuaded growing section of the American ruling class to oppose Reagan's strategy and seek means further to restrict his ability to intervene in Central America.

But the struggles of the Salvadorean workers and peasants and the defence of the Nicaraguan revolution must not be left in the hands of the capitalist parties in the US Congress: the workers movement internationally has the responsibility to mobilise in solidarity with the masses of Central One step towards this in Britain would be for trade union and Labour Party activists to support and attend the forthcoming conference on El Salvador in London on May 14. THE CHINESE Stalinist leadership has sentenced a Hong Kong left winger, Liu San Quing, to ten years' imprisonment for his involvement with the Chinese Democracy Movement.

Liu had been held by the Chinese authorities since December 1981, but only in March ot this year has his fatherbeen offically notitied of his whereabouts after two fruitless visits to China.

As a Hong Kong citizen, the Chinese government has claimed that Liu is also a Chinese national, whose security and trial is the sole national affair of China.

Although Liu was accused of 'unlawful deeds' inside China, no exact verdict or date of his trial has been released, and it is believed that he was seized and sentenced because of his active solidarity work in Hong Kong for the Chinese Democracy Movement..

The Committee for the release of Liu Sen Qing is urging all those who support the fight for socialist democracy in China to write to the Chinese government urging his immediate release, and to raise petitions along these lines in labour movement organisations.

Liu is one of 30 leaders of the Chinese Democracy Movement who have already been detained by Deng's regime for two full years.