[From the Political-Organisational Report adopted at the Fourth Party Congress, January 1988.]

On December 8, 1987, President Reagan and General Secretary Gorbachev signed a pact in Washington which is aimed at eliminating an entire category of short- and medium-range nuclear missiles. We share the jubilation of the people of the world and welcome this pact. This agreement, though quite insufficient in terms of quantity of nuclear arsenal (only 4 per cent) it seeks to eliminate, signifies a good beginning and has been made possible due to the combined impact of a variety of factors, viz., the economic crisis in the USA and the imperative need for economic rationalisation in the USSR, the hazards of nuclear technology at a point of its development as witnessed in certain leaks in American nuclear plants as well as the infamous Chernobyl accident, the growing intensity of peace movements in Western Europe and the USA, and, of course, the peace offensive launched by Mikhail Gorbachev, and so on and so forth.

As a word of caution we must reiterate here that the premise of peace offensive as outlined by Gorbachev in his November address, visualising an imperialist system without the danger of war, without militarisation of the economy and without neo-colonial exploitation, a capitalist system peacefully competing with a socialist system, presents imperialism in rosy colours, and hence cannot be accepted. The struggle of the people of the Third World against neo-colonial exploitation and domination, peace movements of European and American peoples, working class struggle against the militarisation of their respective economies, and political and diplomatic initiatives of powerful socialist countries will ultimately create condition for the destruction of the imperialist system and only with its destruction will the danger of war be finally resolved.