Puzzling Moscow meeting

Press, 2 July 1983, Page 16

Puzzling Moscow meeting

Did the Warsaw Pact countries have one of the most significant meetings they have ever,, held in Moscow this week? Or was it a meeting of such ordinariness that it deserved only a report afterwards that seemed to be little more than a restatement of Communist principles? The reason for believing that it was a significant meeting is that reports from East European sources beforehand said that the meeting had been called to give support to the threat by the Soviet Union to station nuclear weapons in Eastern Europe. A declaration of Eastern Europe’s agreement with the Soviet Union had been expected. Such a declaration was not made. If the Soviet Union sought the agreement of Eastern European countries to station weapons on their territories and did not obtain that agreement, the significance of the meeting would be hard to exaggerate. The West is used to disagreements and strains within the Western Alliance. The Western Europeans, the Canadians, and the Americans, as members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, have not been secretive about the nature of the strains. The world is not used to seeing the exposure of cracks within the Warsaw Pact. The absence of the strong statement in support of the Soviet Union’s threat to deploy nuclear weapons in Eastern Europe has left the way open to the interpretation that there was disagreement. What the nature of the disagreement was, and whether any country other than Rumania disagreed, is not known. Rumania has been rather less of a conformist within the Warsaw Pact than the other members, though its internal regime is as strict and as despotic as any Eastern European country. Rumania would not be particularly important in any discussion about the stationing of nuclear weapons. If there was disagreement, the chances seem strong that Rumania was not the only country with reservations.

The puzzle at the Moscow meeting may bear some relation to what is happening at the intermittent talks about the reduction of conventional arms in Europe being held in Vienna. An encouraging development has occurred there. The Warsaw Pact countries have proposed a treaty that is more precise than others they have proposed. They appear to have been stung by accusations that they have been placing obstacles in the way of progress. The North Atlantic Treaty Organisation countries have given a cautious welcome to the proposal, but are still worried about methods of verification. The Warsaw Pact countries may have been reluctant to be seen as joining a threat from Moscow on nuclear arms at the same time as they were putting forward a plan to reduce conventional arms and armies. The Eastern European allies of the Soviet Union may have seen dangers for themselves in allowing any spread of nuclear weapons on their territories. One of the problems faced by those in the West who find more than a touch of madness about the increases in nuclear 1 arms is that there does not appear to be any anti-nuclear movement of similar importance in the Soviet Union or its allies. Some of those who press Governments in the West for disarmament measures are haunted by the possibility that they will force their Governments to take measures that would so benefit the Soviet Union that international security would be endangered. If there really was disagreement among some Warsaw Pact countries about allowing nuclear weapons to be stationed in their countries, this may be meant as a signal to the West — genuine or calculated — that fears about nuclear war are just as strong, and that the desire for arms reductions is just as strong, in Eastern Europe. Either way, real or contrived, the signal would become part of the nuclear debate in the West.