Monday, Nov. 16, 1970

The Growing Gulf Between the Big Two

SHORTLY before he emplaned for a ten-day vacation at Key Biscayne last week, President Nixon issued a terse directive to ranking U.S. officials and diplomats: boycott the festivities in Moscow and at Soviet embassies round the world in honor of the 53rd anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution.

The extraordinary presidential order indicated the extent to which U.S.-Soviet relations have deteriorated in recent months. It comes at a moment when delicate East-West negotiations are under way in Helsinki, Berlin and Warsaw. While the growing gulf between Washington and Moscow has not led to a suspension of any talks, it certainly has not improved the atmosphere around the conference tables.

Nixon's action reflected deep U.S. displeasure with the Soviets over a number of issues. Washington remains disturbed by Russia's role in sneaking missiles into the cease-fire zone along the Suez Canal. The U.S. is also disappointed that Moscow has refused to exert pressure on North Viet Nam and the Viet Cong to be more reasonable at the stalled peace talks in Paris, where Hanoi's Chief Delegate Xuan Thuy last week called Nixon a liar. Washington is especially upset, however, over the case of the captive U.S. generals, whose unarmed Beechcraft blundered off course on a flight in Turkey and was forced down by MIGs in Soviet Armenia (TIME, Nov. 9).

The Kremlin chose to magnify the incident into a major diplomatic demarche. In a policy address last week, Politburo Ideologue Mikhail Suslov asserted that U.S. bases on the Soviet periphery imperil his country and prove that Washington is pursuing "a policy of criminal aggression." The Soviets dropped contradictory hints--some to the effect that they might release the Americans this week, others indicating that they might be preparing to put them on trial, just as they had U-2 Pilot Gary Powers in 1960.

Despite misgivings, the U.S. and its allies last week pressed on with their major negotiations with the Soviets:

HELSINKI: As the third round of the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks resumed in Finland's capital, the Russians probed a U.S. proposal under which both sides would limit their strategic-weapons systems. They are understood to have countered with a proposal of their own, but the details remained secret.

Even as SALT resumed, both sides deployed new weapons. The U.S. orbited an advanced spy-in-the-sky that will cover missile launchings from Soviet Asia and China. As Aviation Week will report this week, the Soviets have conducted a second successful test of a missile system that destroys orbiting satellites. Since both sides would depend on satellites to police a SALT agreement, the Soviet weapon is extremely worrisome to the U.S., since it could destroy American spies-in-the-sky at the crucial moment of a Soviet attack.

BERLIN: In West Berlin, the ambassadors of the Big Four (U.S., Soviet Union, Britain and France) held their ninth meeting since last July on the status of the divided city. The Soviets expressed a. readiness to accept a package deal on three major issues in the talks: 1) civilian access from West Germany to West Berlin, which sits 110 miles inside East Germany; 2) the right of West Berliners to visit East Berlin; 3) the political status of West Berlin.

The Big Four agreed that West Germany, East Germany and the West Berlin Senate should work out an agreement on the first two issues. But this contains the seeds of a troublesome problem. If West Berlin is treated as a separate and equal partner in negotiating the first two points, Bonn's argument that the city is a part of the federal republic will be undermined. That would reinforce the Soviet contention that West Germany should not be allowed to represent West Berlin diplomatically throughout the Western world as it now does, but that the city should have its own foreign missions.

Nonetheless, the West remains so eager for some sign of movement on Berlin that the tentative Soviet agreement was generally hailed as progress, especially in detente-minded West Germany. Chancellor Willy Brandt is particularly anxious for a settlement in Berlin to buttress his shaky coalition of Social Democrats and Free Democrats. Still, if the Russians want to heighten tensions in the city again, they got the perfect pretext at week's end. A rightist sniper, who left behind handbills charging that Brandt was abandoning West Berlin, seriously wounded a Soviet sentry guarding the Russian war memorial in the British sector of the city.

WARSAW: West German Foreign Minister Walter Scheel, who is also the Free Democrats' leader, swept into Warsaw last week for the last round of talks that are expected to lead to the normalization of relations between Poland and West Germany. The dispute focuses on West Germany's reluctance to comply with the Polish demand that the Oder-Neisse boundary, which ceded one-fourth of prewar Germany to Poland, should be recognized as final (see story, page 35). Also unresolved is the question of the ethnic Germans, believed to number 100,000, who still live in Poland. Polish Foreign Minister Stefan Jedrychowski insists that only those Germans with direct family ties in West Germany be permitted to leave, if they wish to. Scheel would like a broader definition of who is allowed to go. He wants the first trainloads leaving the very day the treaty is signed.

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