The debates around
PEACE MOVEMENT the manner of approaching the question of peace, the immediate stakes are not the same in the West and in the East. (2) In the former, the movements have stressed above all the fight against missile deploythe Prague Appeal ment. They have centered * their demonstrations around this question and have demanded measures leading to unilateral disarmament. In the latter countries, the peace activists have posed first of all, and sometimes exclusively, the problem of demo-
FOR SOME TIME the question of the division of Europe has become increasingly important in the internal debates of the peace movement. It is principally around this theme that the dialogue between the peace groups in the East and the West has begun. The place accorded to this question at the last four conventions of the European Nuclear Disarmament campaign (END) attests to the sensitivity to it in the ranks of the movement. After the international meeting in Perugia, Italy, in 1984, a Network for an East-West Dialogue was set up at the initiation of Dieter Esche, the German Greens' deputy to the European Parliament. This Network organized an initial forum on the theme "Europe and peace, 40 years after Yalta," in West Berlin, in February 1985, and is preparing a second one for this coming April in Milan to be called "The Helsinki Accords: a mirage or a hope for Europe?" The following aricle outlines the debate that has ensued on this issue. JACQUELINE ALLIO cratic rights of expression and of organization, without which all discussion and proposals for action for peace sound like pure abstractions.
Charter 77 [Czech human rights group] has played a not insignificant role in this debate, even though it is not defined as a peace organization. Although Czechoslovakia has no peace movement comparable to that in East Germany, the signers of the Charter have on several occasions addressed open letters to the antiwar movement in the West. By their having taken such a position, no matter what the disagreements they may have had in this regard, the Charter's authors have given impetus to the debate among peace activists of other countries in Easter Europe. Their address to the END convention in Amsterdam in July 1985 (called the Prague Appeal and centering on the of the Helsinki elicited responses by the dozens,
The problem of the division of their combined political problems has Europe has been highlighted since the Western peace movement, in spite of the breadth of its mobilizations, began series of countries with the deployment of US missiles. These defeats have entailed more profound questioning of the strategy put forward up until now. The inability to make the governments of the NATO countries retreat from the demented arms race has shown what weight the policy of the status quo, established by the Yalta agreements in 1945 and ratified by the Helsinki Accords 30 years later, bears in the maintenance of respective hegemonies of imperialism and the Soviet bureaucracy on the two parts of Europe. The massive mobilizations last autumn in Great Britain, the Netherlands and the Spanish state peace movements in these countries have not been defused but that they have recoiled is undeniable. (1) Moreover, the question of alliances - with the organized workers movement or with independent peace groups in the East - is being posed sharply in face of the need to conquer the enemy and create a new relationship of forces on the national and international scale. The ability of the movement to set forth perspectives for action while taking into account
International Viewpoint 24 March 1986 also been an important advance. A difficult dialogue with the independent groups of Eastern Europe has not always been easy and a number of obstacles and misunderstandings have had to be overcome. First of all there in communicating directly because of the risk of repression which independent peace activists in the East run by holding meetings in their own countries and in the light of the obstinate refusal of the authorities to grant them visas international forums held in the West. Also, the projection of a favorable image of the Western peace movements put forward by the bureaucracy in Easter European countries is sure to provoke an understandable mistrust.
There is also certain organizations in anxious to maintain a good relationship with the official committees in the East even to the point of sacrificing their relationship with indepenactivists who have suffered repression, are seen as traitors. Even aside from the basic differences in
East as from the West. These contributions revealed point of view by the authors of the Appeal as to
The authors of the appeal reproach the antiwar movement for not having made more of a document that they as representing a peace pledge on the part of the signatory states. However, many people in the debate, skeptical of the peaceful intentions of the present governments, did not hide their doubts about the worth international treaties that, simply not being applied, can become scraps of paper. one of the reasons given by the Polish KOS [Committee of Social Resistance] - a clandestine organization linked to Solidarnose - for refusing to sign rebelled at the idea that the status quo should just be accepted since that runs completely counter to the perspective of dissolution of the military blocs.
On the situation in the Netherlands see the article by Wineke 't Hart in 'international Viewpoint. Viereat Britain and the Spanish No. June 1985. State see 'IV No. 79, July 1, 1985.