UN troops set for Sierra Leone

During a week-long visit to several African nations in mid-October, U.S. secretary of state Madeleine Albright said Washington would write off Sierra Leone's $65 million of debt owed to U.S. capitalist investors, provided the country followed the dictates of an International Monetary Fund economic program. The imperialist-brokered deal also includes Washington's input on who will control the country's diamond mines.  
 

Rightists gain in Swiss elections

According to early election results released October 24, the rightist People's Party grabbed a stunning share of votes, some 23 percent, in Switzerland's parliamentary elections.

It is likely the People's Party, which waged an anti-immigrant, nationalist campaign, will fill 44 of the 200 seats in the lower house of Parliament. Its victory could shatter the country's coalition government, which has ruled since 1959. Two weeks earlier the right-wing Freedom Party of Austria won second place in that country's parliamentary elections.  
 

Russian rockets strike Chechnya

Russian rockets pounded downtown Grozny, the capital of Chechnya, October 21, demolishing a market and killing more than 140 people as the Kremlin tightened its military ring around the region. Moscow initially denied its responsibility for the attack, trying to blame guerrilla forces fighting for Chechen independence. Officials in Grozny said more than 400 people were injured in the assault launched by Russian forces, which have moved to within eight miles of downtown Grozny. Chechen president Aslan Maskhadov said northern Grozny was under intensive artillery bombardment.

The Clinton administration has begun to criticize the Kremlin's latest onslaught against the largely Islamic people of Chechnya, which has killed more than 2,000 civilians since the summer. The White House backed Russian president Boris Yeltsin's 1994–96 war against the Chechens. Expressing nervousness that Moscow's aggression could backfire, White House press secretary Joseph Lockhart asserted at an October 22 news conference, "We should not repeat the mistakes of 1994 and 1996," when Yeltsin was humiliated after a Russian invasion was defeated.  
 

Unions protest cuts in Germany

Tens of thousands of teachers, public workers, and others rallied in the streets of Berlin October 19 to protest the government's austerity program. German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder had proposed budget cuts of $16.7 billion, a freeze on pensions and wages, and a ceiling on Social Security payments.

Schröder — whose Social Democratic Party was bruised in recent state and municipal elections — tried to head off the protest by declaring openness to consider reintroducing a wealth tax that was abolished in 1997. Germany's labor minister gave lip service to union demands to reduce the retirement age from 65 to 60.  
 

China: 'ABM Treaty must stay'

Beijing joined the governments of Russia and Belarus in requesting the UN General Assembly demand the 1972 Antiballistic Missile Treaty between Moscow and Washington stay intact. The Clinton administration is pressing to change the accord in order to construct a new "battle management" radar system in Alaska and station 100 antimissile interceptors there by 2005. Another radar system and 100 interceptors would be placed in North Dakota by 2010. The missile system would abrogate the accord and would give Washington effective first strike nuclear capability for the first time since the development by the Soviet Union of a hydrogen bomb and intercontinental missiles.  
 

Nissan to chop 21,000 jobs

Faced with intensified competition, years of mounting debts, and sagging profits, auto bosses at Nissan Motor Co. announced a three-year "overhaul" plan October 18. Japan's third-largest automaker said it will eliminate 21,000 jobs and shut down three plants as part of a drive to regain lost world market share, which dropped to 4.9 percent from 6.6 percent in 1991.

Japan's capitalist rulers are counting on the unions to swallow the cutbacks without much resistance and hope to mount similar assaults on working people in other industries. Nihon Keizai Shimbon, Japan's leading financial daily, reported October 19 that Nippon Telegraph and Telephone presented plans to union officials to fire 20,000 workers, or 16 percent of its workforce. Sony Corp. plans to slash 17,000 jobs and bosses at NEC Corp. project dumping 15,000 workers on the streets by 2002. Japan in 1998-99 has been gripped by its worst recession since World War II.  
 

Japan official dismissed for endorsing nuclear weapons

Shingo Nishimura, Japan's deputy vice minister of defense, was forced to resign October 20 for suggesting that Japan should scrap its nuclear-weapons ban. "Nuclear weapons equal deterrence," declared Nishimura. "If there were no punishments for rape, we would all be rapists. We do not become rapists because there is the deterrent of punishment."

Nishimura's comments and actions reflect growing pressures on Japan's capitalist rulers to use their armed forces to intervene abroad to defend their class interests. In 1997 Nishimura took part in an expedition to the Senkaku islands in the East China Sea to plant a Japanese flag. The islands are also claimed by the governments of China and Taiwan. "We must have the military power and the legal authority to act on it…We must even have the atomic bomb," he asserted during an interview with the Washington Post last August. In 1996 Japan had the world's third highest military budget at $45 billion.  
 

Arab man freed after 19 months in U.S. jail on 'secret evidence'

Mahmoud Kiareldeen, a Palestinian, walked out of the Hudson County Correctional Center in New Jersey October 26. He had been incarcerated for the past 19 months by the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) based on "secret evidence" supposedly linking him to "terrorist activity." "[Kiareldeen] has never been charged with violation of any criminal laws," said U.S. District Judge William Walls, who charged that the INS case against Kiareldeen was "uncorroborated hearsay accusations."

The week before Wall's ruling an immigration panel dismissed the "secret evidence" and granted Kiareldeen permanent residency. Last April, a federal judge who reviewed the case ordered him released on bail. Kiarel-deen is among some 20 people, most of them Arabs, imprisoned under similar circumstances.

— MAURICE WILLIAMS  
 
 
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