p I would like first to underline the interest of our exchange in me seminar for two main reasons. I am intervening here in the prefiminary debate.

p Fast, the situation we are under is very complex. The failure of bareauaatk sodafism is not the failure of socialism, it is not also the triumph of capitalism. It will not lead to the failure of capitalism on one condition - unless we draw the lesson from the experience. For it is because of this that it is very useful to make our own analysis and to confirm this analysis with the analysis of others, to exchange views, to confirm our experiences. The second reason is that we have common targets in fields like international solidarity, new world order, peace.

p Our perception is mat all this can be done only in respecting scrupulously the independence of each party. The international communist movement suffered a lot and for long because of another conception mat was promoted at that time. To go forward in {^international level it is necessary to go forward in each of our countries. On national objectives and also on international objectives in each of our countries.

The French Communist Party has solid tradition of international solidarity against repression, for independence. We are actually developing a large campaign of solidarity with Cuba, with Sooth Africa, with Palestine, we fought against the Vietnam war, we are actually expressing our active solidarity with our comrades of Turkey, and so towards Greece and Portugal when they were under dictatorship. The engagement on the international front fonnsa large part of our activity in France. And to achieve this, we 336 think that we must have total independence of action and thinking. For two reasons. First, the concrete conditions are everywhere different from each other. The second reason is democracy, the participation of the biggest amount of people possible, vast majority of people. We think that the vast majority of people being behind anything, that is the main concept of our time now, democracy. We need democracy to provoke a setback to imperialism. We need democracy to defeat imperialism. It is in this period that we are very attached to the cooperation between all the communist parties and all the progressive forces. And it is in this spirit that we appreciated a lot, the holding of this seminar.