from Dave windsor In an attempt to outdo Harold Wilson in "East of Suezism", Sir Alec Douglas Home has raised a hue and cry about Soviet penetration of the liiddle East. He has been aided in this scare by a combination of hack jouranlists and such figures as King Hussein of Jordan, who desperately wants American aid to keep his tottering Kingdom together. However, Sir Alec has received a rebuff from an unexpected source-- the House of Lords! Moreover, the rebuttal is absolutely devastdting insofar as it completely demolishes Sir Alec's main bogey: the spectre of Soviet arms "pouring into Somalia." This rap over the knuckles took the form of a letter in the Daily Telgraph as follows: "Under the heading "Soviet Arms Pouring into Somalia" Richard Beeston says that "if French Somaliland votes for independence the Emperor of Ethiopia is convinced that Somalia will attempt a military take-over of the colony. The supply of Soviet arms to Somalia is in pummance of an agreement made by the Somali Government with the Swiet Union early in 1964. The appeal to Moscow was made after similar appeals to Washington, London, Roma and Bonn had met with paltry offers of ‘"military aid. The occasion for these urgent appeals was the intrusion of Ethiopian military forces into the territory of the Somali Republic (including bombs on Hargeisa) in 1963/64.
"The emperor has never withdrawn his wholly unfounded claim that Somalia was always an integral part of Ethiopia and that Ethiopia, while desiring nothing that belongs to others, will never give up what belongs to her. He made the claim in 1941 and again in 1960 and a member of his iimbassy repeated it in a Delhi newspaper in 1963. Precisely the same claim, a claim as groundless as ever, has lately been made by the Emperor in respect of French Somaliland in his "part and parcel" speech. The Emperor has already created tension in the Horn by refusing self-determination to the large part of the Somali nation which lies dismembered across the borders of Somalia in Ethiopiangoverned territory, and also by persuading Kenya to do the same thing with another Somali desert region about the size of England. "His threat to annex French Somaliland cohtrasts with the Somali statement "We only want to see them free and independent in unity under one flag of their own choice"; this statement is in line with the recent resolution of the Organisation of © ‘7 African Unity at its summit meeting in the Emperor's own capital; the O.A.U. adds the most relevant and vital consideration of all, namely that the referendum in question should be conducted "on an entirely free, democratic and impartial basis." The Russians have no operational base of any kind in Somalia, and the primitve port of Berbera (allegedly "converted by the Russians into a modern port") over which the Somalis and Russians conducted me last July has at present no berthing facilities at all; it is