Allende breaks off strike talks

Press, Volume CXII, Issue 33060, 30 October 1972, Page 15

Allende breaks off strike talks

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter—Copyright)

SANTIAGO, October 29.

President Allende of Chile announced yesterday that he was breaking off talks with lorry owners and other business concerns, because they had made “unacceptable” political demands.

In an early morning radio and television broadcast, the President said he had called off a meeting planned for tomorrow to discuss the owners’ demands. He did not go into details about the contents of a document handed to him by Mr Hugo Leon, spokesman for the so-called "bosses strike,” now in its seventeenth day. ‘FASCIST SEDITION’ Dr Allende said the strike was being exploited by "seditious, Fascist or nearFascist groups” and warned he would use the full force of the law against them. He repeated a previous statement that the strike had cost Chile more than SUSIOOm. Mr Leon said that the lorry owners, shopkeepers and other strikers had withdrawn demands considered political by the Government and replaced them with demands strictly related to their unions. But in his broadcast. Dr Allende said the new demands were still of a political rather than a union nature and he could not discuss them. One of the original reasons for the lorry owners’ strike—which led to a Government decree placing 21 of Chile’s 25 provinces under military control —was a reported Government plan to set up a State transport system in the far south. The Government says its intentions were “misinterpreted.”

Dr Allende has also freed Chile’s 155 radio stations from a compulsory link with the State network. The measure had been taken to avoid "alarmist reporting” of the national crisis.

But it was disclosed yesterday that Dr Allende’s order was only made after an Appeals Court had ruled that the restrictions were unconstitutional. The order also cancelled suspensions imposed on 16 radio stations which had disobeyed the compulsory link.