Peace in Vietnam; ill-will in some other areas

Press, Volume CXV, Issue 34035, 26 December 1975, Page 11

Peace in Vietnam; ill-will in some other areas

CN Z.P.A.-Reuter—Copyright)

LONDON, Dec 25

It was a bitter, angry Christmas in many parts of the world — except in Vietnam.

Saigon, capital of the Asian battleground where East and West clashed for an entire generation, was enjoying its first Christmas at peace. But in the Middle East, the Far East, Argentina, Portugal, and many other parts of Europe, the yuletide season brought nothing but heartache.

There were shootings, street battles, kidnappings, destruction, and turmoil. But in the Vietnamese capital of Saigon, where previous Christmases were marred by the horror of war, shops were crowded with people buying Christmas trees.

Under a Communist administration that allowed religious worship, midnight mass was being celebrated in Saigon cathedral by Archbishop Nguyen Van Binh, who issued a Christmas message calling on fellow Roman Catholics to build an independent Vietnam.

Christmas arrived noisily in Bethlehem with brass bands and Israeli troops guarding 25,000 pilgrims queuing to see the grotto where legend says Jesus Christ was bom. For the first time it was a red instead of a white Christmas in Nazareth, the town where Jesus spent his youth and which has now become the first Israeli municipality with an elected Communist Mayor. Portugal, among the most restive of Western European nations hit by a world-wide recession, imposed a wage freeze until next March.

Lebanon was crushed by a new wave of shootings and kidnappings in the civil war that has left at least 5000 dead in eight months. Warfare raged throughout two territories ' where Portugal once held sway — Angola on the west coast of Africa and Timor in the Far East. Big-Power politics were involved in Angola, the United States and the Soviet Union backing opposite sides in a civil war.

Argentinians woke to the carnage of night-long street battles in which more than 100 guerrillas died. They were mown down in an

assault on an Army arsenal in Buenos Aires.

In Vatican City, a frail 78-year-old Pope wound up the Holy Year of the Roman Catholic Church — one that brought millions of pilgrims flocking to Rome for a festival of renewal and reconciliation.

Like many others, however, 1975 turned out to be a year of death rather than dedication.