CIUDAD
TRUJILLO, Dominican Republic, April 6 — The fallen strongman of
Argentina, Juan Peron, expects to be "called" back into power
momentarily.

He made that confident prediction to me today from his comfortable exile in a villa close to this Caribbean city.

"I
will go back only when the people call me," he said. Then he added,
with a grin that was somewhat prematurely triumphant, "It is inevitable
that they will."

Peron stated that millions of his followers –the outlawed Peronistas — are systematically strangling the country's economy so that the present government will fall.

"They've
caused major strikes," he told me. "And the next plan is that people
all through Argentina will refuse to pay their gas, electric and water
bills."

 
The ex-dictator claims that of the 10 million voters in Argentina, 7 million are members of the Peronista Party and are actively fighting for his return.

The
husky, onetime boxer and Olympic fencing champion, still a dynamic
personality at 63, flatly admits that his followers are deliberately
sabotaging the existing democratic government.

Peronistas,
officially banned as a political organization, want Argentina so hungry
and so helpless that she will again look desperately to Peron as the
one force strong enough to save her.

And the towering, robust
politician who has been labeled the "Hitler of the Western Hemisphere"
by his enemies, is ready to "rescue" Argentina at any time.

The reasons he gave me:

Banks are in a perilous condition. Strikes continually paralyze all industry. There are 200 ships docked at Buenos Aires waiting for idle, pro-Peron union workers to handle cargoes.

In
Argentina today, a family can live only 15 days on the kind of
workingman's wage that would have supported them for a full month in
1955 before his dictatorship crumbled.

He
charges that the cost of meat is 11 times higher than in 1955 and the
Argentine dollar is worth only one-fourth as much. Peron was cheerful
and smiling as he predicted the almost immediate death of democracy in
his country.

"In chaos such as there is there now, anything can happen. But time is on my side. Time will have the last word."

We
talked on the veranda of his tropical villa several miles from the
Dominican Republic's capital city. Peron shares his exile here withAmerico Barrios, an Argentinian publisher who is now his press secretary.

They
told me I was the first newsman the former dictator had talked with in
recent months. He had been avoiding interviews, he said, because of the
"critical political situation in Argentina."

He also agreed to
grant me an exclusive television interview, the first he has submitted
to since he fled Argentina. It will be shown soon onKTTV.

For
more than three years, Peron has lived unmolested in the Dominican
Republic, a tropical dictatorship which contradictorily offers refuge
to exiles of many, and often opposing, political beliefs.

The latest visitor by necessity is Fulgencio Batista of Cuba. Although he denied that he was running his outlaw party from Ciudad Trujillo, Peron admitted to me that he is kept informed of current developments in plans to revive his dictatorship.

"I keep in touch with my former officials who are in exile all over the world — sometimes by letter, sometimes by telephone.

"These are the men I will bring back. They are what Argentina lacks. And I have them," he said.

Thousands
of these exiles are ready to return to government jobs if Peron
re-establishes his dictatorship. And millions now dedicated to
sabotaging Argentina's democracy would cooperate fully with him, Peron
predicted.

"I have word that people in Argentina will work eight
hours a day on their jobs and then work an additional two hours for
me," he explained. Then Juan Peron added an ominous promise:

"If I were called back to Argentina tomorrow in six months I could have the country where it was in 1955."