Despite intense pressure from the bureaucratic regime in the Soviet Union, the Vietnamese liberation fighters have refused to back down in the face of Nixon's blockade and all-outbombing campaign. In response to Nixon's blockade and trip to Moscow, the Vietnamese have refused to accept the Soviet bureaucrats' urgings to stop their struggle and negotiate on the terms of the U.S. imperialists.
Nhan Dan, the organ of the North Vietnamese Communist Party, published a sharp criticism of some of President Nixon's pronouncements during his recent trip to the Soviet Union. The criticism was signed "commentator", the designation used for semi-official statements. "At no time does the newspaper point out that the statements of the American chief executive were made in the USSR", noted Agence FrancePresse, "but the preciseness of the quotes The article referred, for instance, to Nixon's hypocritical commiseration with the children who died during the Nazi siege of Leningrad.
supply lines from Yemen-as the US had done along the Ho Chi Minh trail in Vietnam. As in the eastern region, the imperialist forces were able to seize specific strong points and inflict considerable suffering on the population. But the People's Liberation Army and the Popular Militia, which make up the guerrilla forces, have been able to keep supply lines open, and in the middle of May they reoccupied the key British base of Thagbeet. With the start of the monsoon the level of fighting will slow down, until the beginning of October.
The intensification of the war in Dhofar is only one part of a more general imperialist plan to strengthen its position in the Gulf, and to ensure "stability" in the aftermath of Britain's partial withdrawal from the non-Omani parts of the Gulf last year. A key target on the imperialist agenda has been the elimination of the government in People's Yemen. Attacks from Oman, from northern Yemen and from Saudi Arabia have taken place in the past six months. And British officers in Dhofar have openly said that the precondition for ending the guerrilla struggle there is that there be a change of regime in Democratic Yemen.
In the Gulf itself, the US has stepped up its presence, It has taken over the running of a naval base on the island of Bahrain, which the British evacuated at the end of last year. And it has given $150 m. in aid to the Sultan of Oman, to help him finance his anti-guerrilla campaign. A US fishing firm, Mardello, of which Shirley Temple's husband is the boss, has set up a fleet of "trawlers" off the 1,000mile Omani coast to carry out anti-guerrilla