Mrs Peron under pressure

Press, Volume CXV, Issue 33928, 22 August 1975, Page 9

Mrs Peron under pressure

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter—Copyright) BUENOS AIRES, August 21. Influential army officers are pressing President Maria Estela Peron of Argentina to dismiss both their commander and the Minister of the Interior, according to informed sources in Buenos Aires.

If she agrees to dispense with the services of the Army Chief of Staff (General Alberto Luma Laplane) and the Minister (Colonel Vicente Damasco), officers ready and willing to arrange a coup d’etat will move into a dominant position, the sources add.

Army unease over the Peronist Government’s apparent inability to control the country was increased by Left-wing guerrilla assaults in the central industrial city of Cordoba yesterday: synchronised bomb and gun attacks on police barracks, on the headquarters of the provincial government, and on infantry barracks and other public buildings, left at least five policemen and one guerrilla killed, and 30 people wounded, many of them civilians caught in crossfire.

The city was rocked by bomb blasts and heavy gunfire during the 20-minute

co-ordinated attacks by the People’s Revolutionary Army. The guerrillas used bazookas and tossed bombs from a light aircraft. People tied from the city centre, and shops and offices closed after guerrilla snipers, perched in trees and on rooftops, opened fire on the police and troops. One bomb wrecked the police communications centre. The police fear that yesterday’s attacks were-merely a dress rehearsal for a more serious guerrilla onslaught today and tomorrow, to mark the third anniversary of the so-called “Trelew massacre,” in which 16 Left-wing guerrillas were shot dead in prison.

The Cordoba battle gave added significance to a lightning call yesterday on President Peron by Colonel Damasco, the Foreign Minister (Mr Angle Robledo) and the Commander of the Navy (Admiral Emilio Massera). They went to see her in the Atlantic coast resort of Mar del Plata, where she is officially said to be resting to complete her recuperation from mental and physical exhaustion caused by overwork during six weeks of political and economic crisis.

Informed sources say that she was told that influential army officers controlling most of the force’s firepower had demanded the resignation of General Luma

Laplane and Colonel Damasco. Some senior officers are known to have objected to Colonel Damasco's appointment as Minister of the Interior, breaking the armed forces’ policy of nonintervention in politics. If General Luma Laplane land Colonel Damasco do lose | their positions, military I sources say, power is likely jto fall into the hands of- a igroup led by the Chairman

iof the Joint Chiefs of Stalf I (General Jorge Videia). who lis thought to favour open military intervention to till the obvious power vacuum Military intervention of this kind would almost cerItainly mean an intensified ;effort by the armed forces .to smash the Left-wing guerrillas who appear to have gained strength during the last two months of Government indecision.