Sparticist Blasts U.S., China For Their Stands on Angola

In a speech before 40 students in Boylston Hall last night, Spartacist Central Committee member Joseph Seymour called the civil war in Angola "the most important international conflict since Vietnam" and attacked both the United States and China for their stands in the Angolan conflict.

Following the Portuguese pullout from Angola in November, three rival independence movements have been engaged in a fierce civil war in the former Portuguese colony.

The Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola, (MPLA), is now battling a coalition between the National Front for the Liberation of Angola, (FNLA), and the National Union for the total Liberation of Angola, (UNITA).

Seymour said that American and Chinese support for the UNITA-FNLA coalition represented a move toward direct military collaboration between the U.S. and China throughout the globe.

Military cooperation between the U.S. and China "will come at the expense of Third World peoples" and will not further the interests of world communism, Seymour said.

Seymour called American communists who support the Chinese stand "mealy-mouthed Marxists" and "mere handraisers for Peking." Those who support the Chinese policies are allying themselves with Gulf Oil and the C.I.A., Seymour said.

Seymour said the Soviet backed MPLA, while not a real revolutionary party, is at least a "bonafide bourgeois nationalists group" in contrast to UNITA-FNLA which he labeled as "merely a front."

The MPLA which currently holds the Angolan capital, Luanda, and the country's eastern coastal area is backed by the Soviet Union and several thousand Cuban troops.

UNITA, active in the south, recieves support from South Africa, Zambia, and Portuguese business interests. The FNLA is supported by the U.S., Zaire, and China.

Much of the foreign interest in Angola centers around Cabinda, the former Portuguese enclave north of Angola, which possesses enormous oil reserves.