In April the government formed the People's Liberation Army (PLA) and completed the disarmament of Okello's remaining FMF militia. On 26 April Karume announced that a union had been negotiated with Tanganyika to form the new country of Tanzania. The merger was seen by contemporary media as a means of preventing communist subversion of Zanzibar; at least one historian states that it may have been an attempt by Karume, a moderate socialist, to limit the influence of the radically left-wing Umma Party. Babu had become close to Chinese diplomats who had arranged for several shipments of arms to be sent to Zanzibar to allow the Umma Party to have a paramilitary wing. Both Karume and President Nyerere of Tanganyika were concerned that Zanzibar was starting to become a hot-spot of Cold War tensions as American and British diplomats competed for influence with Soviet, Chinese and East German diplomats, and having a union with the non-aligned Tanganyika was considered the best way of removing Zanzibar from the world spotlight. However, many of the Umma Party's socialist policies on health, education and social welfare were adopted by the government.