Cool Confrontation

In death, Ho Chi Minh last week achieved what had begun to look like an impossible feat. He brought Soviet Premier Aleksei Kosygin and Communist Chinese Premier Chou En-lai together for perhaps as much as 41 hours of talks. In his final testament, Ho described how "deeply I am grieved at the dissensions that are dividing the fraternal parties." Few parties have been less fraternal lately than the Chinese and the Russian, yet both, for their own reasons, responded to Ho's plea for unity. Though the conference at Peking Airport appeared to leave intact the deep ideological chasm between the two, the mere fact that the meeting took place was intriguing.

The last high-level Sino-Soviet confrontation was held in February 1965, as Kosygin was also on his way home from a visit to Hanoi. On that occasion, Kosygin made it farther than the airport--he was received by Chairman Mao Tse-tung. Almost certainly, they then agreed on the need to increase aid to North Viet Nam, but no progress was evident on the settling of their feud. Since then, the feud has grown to epic proportions. Last March, just after a bitter, bloody Soviet-Chinese clash on the Ussuri River, Kosygin sought to telephone Peking's leaders. As Chinese Defense Minister Lin Piao later told the story, the Chinese replied coldly: "In view of the present relations between China and the Soviet Union, it is unsuitable to communicate by telephone. If the Soviet government has anything to say, it is asked to put it forward officially through diplomatic channels." Despite the snub, Moscow persisted--and again was turned down. Finally, this summer, the Soviets and the Chinese managed to hold low-level talks on border river navigation, and the stage seemed to have been set for more significant border talks. Then a new clash broke out along the Sinkiang-Kazakhstan border, and in the past month, Peking and Moscow have exchanged serious charges. Peking accused the Russians of causing an astounding 429 border incidents in June and July alone. Moscow countered last week by charging China with 488 frontier violations between June and mid-August, and warned that further encroachments "will be most resolutely rebuffed."

Only Ho's death, and the opportunity it offered the Chinese to strengthen their position in North Viet Nam, seem to have brought Peking to the point of agreeing to a new meeting. Certainly, the Chinese could not have snubbed Ho's posthumous plea for an end to comradely hostility without offending Hanoi. Rumanian Premier Ion Gheorghe Maurer, who stopped off in Peking en route home to Bucharest after Ho's funeral, appealed for Sino-Soviet talks. Moreover, the Chinese had stumbled badly in their handling of North Viet Nam over the past several days. Chou had flown to Hanoi before Ho's funeral, then left with almost indecent haste in the face of Kosygin's arrival. Neither Chairman Mao nor No. 2 Man Lin bothered to show up to register condolences with North Viet Nam's embassy in Peking; China watchers suggested that Mao and Lin, who have not been seen in public for nearly four months, may be gravely ill.

Almost certainly the initiative for the meeting came from Moscow. Japanese Communist Party Chairman Sanzo Nosaka said that Kosygin used his North Vietnamese hosts as go-betweens to let the Chinese know that he wanted to stop off in Peking. According to Nosaka, Kosygin made his request as soon as he reached Hanoi, but Peking had not bothered to reply by the time he departed five days later. Kosygin flew to Calcutta and was en route to Dushanbe in Soviet Central Asia when the Chinese leaders finally approved the meeting. Though Kosygin's long detour was interpreted as a loss of face for the Russians, Moscow should ultimately profit from having demonstrated its willingness to forsake protocol in the interests of peace.

Frank Talks. Whether the talks did anything to further the cause of peace, however, is questionable. Both sides later described them as "frank," which suggests that they were probably brusque and unprofitable. According to diplomats in Moscow, Kosygin intended to establish a basis for possible later actions against China in the event that Peking proves intransigent in the future, and to warn Peking that the Soviet Union would tolerate no further border violations.

The border remains touchy. Soviet armed strength in Asia is estimated at up to 1,500,000 men. Countering this force along the border are more than 40 Chinese divisions, totalling about 300,000 men. Over the past several months, the Chinese have become increasingly worried by reports in Western newspapers hinting that Moscow is considering a preventive strike against Peking's atomic-weapons plant at Lanchow and the nuclear testing grounds at Lop Nor, although Kosygin has dismissed such stories as "total nonsense." According to an Indian Foreign Ministry report, China now has begun moving its Lop Nor facilities south to Tibet --farther from the Soviet border.

There is certainly nothing nonsensical, however, about speculation of further trouble to come between the Communist powers. "Their positions are so far apart," Javer Malo, Albania's ambassador to Paris, noted gloomily last week, "that one cannot dare to hope for a reconciliation." Perhaps the most that can be hoped for is that they will manage to avoid all-out war.

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