EASTERN EUROPE THERE ARE DISCORDS IN THE WARSAW CONCERTO

Press, Issue 31095, 25 June 1966, Page 14

EASTERN EUROPE THERE ARE DISCORDS IN THE WARSAW CONCERTO

(By MICHAEL CONKOCK, Eastern European correspondent o] the "Financial Times ) (Reprinted from the "Financial Time*" by arrangement) LONDON, June 16. N.A.T.O. (the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation) has ***” under severe strain lately, with France’s virtual withdrawal to say—with some justice—that Western security is being e £ • But N.A.T.O. is not the only military alliance underJitnun. Its taa European counterpart and potential antagonist, the Warsaw r , being battered by at least one dissident member, Rumania. Rumania in tne last week or so has been providing renewed justification for commentate who see her as the “Eastern European France.”

Like France, Rumania started to show her determined nationalism in the economic sphere. In 1962, and subsequently, she resisted Soviet attempts to introduce coordinated economic planning for the East European bloc. As with France, agriculture provided much of the trouble. In Rumania’s case the objection was to Soviet plans which provided for Rumania to specialise in fruit and vegetable production for Russia, East Germany and Czechoslovakia, receiving manufactured goods in return. Rumania preferred to sell her food in the West and buy machinery there.

Independent Mood

This economic independence soon led the Rumanians to a greater measure of political dissidence. While the Russians were more and more energetically condemning China, the Rumanians pointedly refused to do so, instead maintaining good relations with her and her ally Albania, and in particular continuing to sell oil to China.

The independent mood continued to be expressed in various ways, notably in political overtures to the West in general and France in particular. In April this year, Rumanian feelings of independence were expressed in the strongest way yet, in a speech by the Communist Party Secretary General, Mr Nicolae Ceausescu. Among other things he hinted at the wrong done to Rumania by Russia in taking Bessarabia—a long-standing grievance but one which had been dormant since the most recent Russian seizure of this much-disputed territory in 1944. This speech brought the Soviet Party leader, Mr Brezhnev, flying to Bucharest.

In retrospect at least, it seems clear that the quarrel was bound to reach military matters sooner or later, and now it has done so. Last week the East European Foreign Ministers all met in Moscow. Nothing whatever was released in the Communist countries’ Press but somebody —probably the Rumanians—made sure that the Western Press knew that a dispute was going on about the Warsaw Pact. This week this has received some circumstantial confirmation through a meeting in East Berlin of the Defence Ministers of Russia,

Poland, Czechoslovakia and East Germany.

Signed in 1955

The Warsaw Pact was signed on May 14, 1955, as the first formal multilateral alliance between the Communist States of Eastern Europe. Up to then they had been tied by a network of bilateral pacts. The Warsaw

Pact was signed two months after West Germany entered N.A.T.O. and was explicitly designed to deal with that development. The Pact provided for a joint command, and a political consultative committee. A secretariat and a permanent commission on political questions were set up soon after. Not surprisingly, seeing that the Soviet Union provides much the greatest part of the force available, command is always in Soviet hands. A Soviet Deputy Minister of Defence has always been com-mander-in-chief of the Pact forces, while the Ministers of Defence of the other member countries have been deputy commanders -in - chief. The arrangement shows clearly enough where the power lies. Poland, Czechoslavakia and East Germany have never shown any visible objections to this system. East Germany, in fact, would certainly not be permitted to, while the other two know only too well that the Soviet Union is their guarantee against German attempts at frontier revision, as well as the ultimate protector of their Communist governments.

But the fact that the German problem is still the cement of the alliance as far as Czechoslovakia and Poland are concerned, also explains why Rumania is no longer so interested in it. While the cold war lasted throughout Europe, it seemed necessary for every country to belong definitely to one side or the other. But with tension now centred almost exclusively on the German question, Rumania hardly needs to belong to the Pact.

“Whose Finger”?

Germany is, after all, sufficiently removed from Rumania in order not to have any frontier disputes with her Thus to be involved in the Warsaw Pact is, for Rumania, to be implicated in an organisation which can probably help her little, and which in the worst contingency might harm her. That is to say, if a war should start over Germany, Rumania might be subject to atomic bombing thanks to her Pact membership. The Rumanians have thought of this contingency, and are said to have raised in Moscow last week the

familiar “whose finger on the nuclear trigger” question. Mr Ceausescu made a speech last Saturday in which he called for the abolition of both N.A.T.O. and the Warsaw Pact, and in that order. The coupling of the two may be designed to reassure the Russians. But even so, the Russians must see that Rumania, which has had no Russian troops on her terri-

tory since 1958. is bound to move still further from the alliance.

Bulgaria, in spite of the strong pro-Russian policy of her Government, may be induced by geography to do the same. The Hungarian Government will stick to the Pact, and to the 75,000 Soviet troops In Hungary, more from fear of a repetition of 1956 than of the Germans. But in the last resort, the Russians will be left with the Poles and the Czechs, all tied together by their mistrust of the West Germans (and probably of the East Germans too).