Romesh Chandra
Romesh Chandra was the President of the World Peace Council.
World Peace Council
The first official World Peace Council conference[1]in the U.S. was the Dialogue on Disarmament and Detente held January 25-27, 1978, in Washington, DC.
It was sponsored by a small committee including and World Peace Council Presidium member Communist Party USA functionary and Amalgamated Meatcutters Union vice-president Abe Feinglass.
Attendees included Katherine Camp, International President of the Women's International League for Peace & Freedom, Rep. Ron Dellums, International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers president William Winpisinger, Edith Villastrigo, legislative director of Women Strike for Peace, Connecticut State Representative Irving Stolberg and Illinois State Representative Peggy Martin Smith.
A luncheon was held to honor World Peace Council president Romesh Chandra that was attendedby California Congressmen Philip Burton, Don Edwards, Dellums and New York rep. Charles Rangel.
Soviet propagandist
During her time as International Organization of Journalists vice president, Alice Palmer worked with highest levels of the Soviet propaganda machine-with the Soviet journal Izvestia, with Romesh Chandra and the World Peace Council and IOJ leaders such as Kaarle Nordenstreng and Jiri Kubka.
Alice Palmer told the People's Weekly World[2] ;
- The IOJ has adopted positions on nuclear weapons, trying to do away with the nuclear threat in the world.
- The IOJ stands not only for peace, but for justice as well. An example of its concern for justice is that the same time I was elected a vice president, a number of African nations were also brought in. This was a real move to bring in people from frontline countries and other nations.
- "I will be heading a taskforce on peace and disarmament. And at the conference I was co-moderator, with the editor of Izvestia (a Soviet government publication) :, of a panel on peace and the news media. We came up with some very good suggestions. A number of the people complimented the Soviet Union for its efforts towards peace in these past few years-the moratorium and other things..
- The IOJ has worked with the World Peace Council, and Kaarle Nordenstreng, Jiri Kubka and other IOJ leaders have worked closely with Romesh Chandra, the president of the World Peace Council.
- IOJ delegations visit other countries to report on the peace proposals of the Soviet Union, so that people can hear about it. This by the way is an example of promoting fairness in the media.
- The IOJ is the largest journalist organization in the world. its publications are published in 10 or 15 languages, and it reaches many people all over the world. So you can see that being fair in the media is very important, particularly in the Third World.
Alice Palmer saw journalists and the U.S. "peace movement" as playing a very important role in the struggle for peace[3];
- At the center of this is that the peace movement must stop the Soviet bashing. That is just not productive, it is not a good thing at all. I see over and over again that it is a barrier to our ability to work together in the United States and with the people of the Soviet Union for peace.