CROWDS OUTSIDE GOVERNMENT HOUSE: PRESIDENT ENTERS AND SPEAKS: NEWSMEN LISTEN: NEW MINISTERS INTRODUCED, SHAKE HANDS WITH PRESIDENT.




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Background: A fresh effort to end Chile's month-old crisis was made by President Salvador Allende on Tuesday (August 28), when he announced his tenth cabinet change. The Cabinet of National Unity, including four armed service chiefs, had collapsed in less tan three weeks.

The 36-day-old truck-owners strike, which precipitated the crises, continued. Air Force General Humberto Magliochatti remained transport Public Works Ministers in the new cabinet -- the only service chief to do so -- in the evident belief that he can get talks going with the strikers. The situation worsened when the National shopkeepers federation extended their 48-hour strike "indefinitely".

President Allende's new government included a widely respected independent, Senor Carlos Brisones, a professor of law, in the key post of Interior Minister. The Chief of the Para-Military Carabineros Police, General Jose Maria Sepulveda, remained in the cabinet. The only other military ministers were a Rear-Admiral and a relatively junior General.

Commanders of the Army, Navy and Air Force withdraw whiter open support for the Socialist President under pressure from fellow offices and opposition politicians. Although Dr. Allende made a fighting speech, declaring there would be "neither a civil war nor a coup d'etat," there was clearly great pressure to quickly and the strikes that have been paralysing the country, bringing shortages of food, fuel, and medicines. Widespread sabotage, bomb attack,s and armed clashes between rival groups, increasing daily, have seriously undermined President Allende's 33-months old regime.