THE PRESS THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 13, 1986. Across an East-West bridge

Press, 13 February 1986, Page 20

THE PRESS THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 13, 1986. Across an East-West bridge

The ritual of hanging spies has been made familiar to the public by a number of films and television plays. The exchange which has just occurred is a reminder that such things happen in the real world as well. It is also a reminder that both East and West have spies and expect the other side to have spies. Occasionally, someone spies for both sides. It was Nikita Khrushchev, the Soviet leader, who once suggested to a Western leader that they ought to pool their information on suspected double agents and pay them only once. In this week’s spy exchange, a setting as symbolic as any conceived by a filmmaker was chosen: the iron bridge linking West Berlin with the East German city of Potsdam.

Among those whom Moscow sent on to the bridge was Anatoly Shcharansky, the Soviet dissident, who has had nothing whatsoever to do with spying. His high-profile campaigning for human rights during the 1970 s was the very opposite of anything that might have been useful had he been a spy. In fact, he was a tireless campaigner for the rights of Jews to emigrate from the Soviet Union. He adopted the role of a kind of public relations man for the emigration movement. He got in touch with Western correspondents and arranged press conferences. Those who were refused permission to emigrate — the refuseniks — were advised by Mr Shcharansky to needle the authorities by the use of Soviet law and bureaucratic practice. Then one day it was all over for Mr Shcharansky. He was taken into a K.G.B. car in Gorky Street and later charged with treason for conveying secrets to the C.I.A. He has served nine years of his 13-year sentence. In including Mr Shcharansky among the group, the Soviet Union was according spy status to him; when the West received Mr Shcharansky it separated him from the spies to make clear that the West did not accept him on the terms that Moscow had released him. The rituals of spy swaps were preserved; there was a minor variation to make the politics the plainer. The Soviet Union was under pressure to free Andrei Sakharov, the Soviet physicist, as well. But the Soviet Union considers that Dr Sakharov, who worked on the nuclear programme, has too many. State secrets to be allowed to go to the West. Since Dr Sakharov

has been divorced from the nuclear programme for many years, and because nuclear research is a field in which advances are made rapidly, the Soviet excuse looks thin. If anyone ever wanted a clear example of the difference between the Western system and the system still apparently prevailing in the East, the position of Dr Sakharov may be compared to the position of various former senior armed forces commanders in a number of Western countries who, having become concerned about the dangers of nuclear war, now spend much of their time preaching the anti-nuclear gospel in their own and in other countries. Dr Sakharov is in exile in the Soviet Union and, according to a recent article in the “Observer,” has been complaining of systematic torture and forcefeeding by the K.G'B. The whole spy-swap incident has a number of bizarre aspects, none more so than the suggestion that President Botha of South Africa would release the black leader, Mr Nelson Mandela, if the Soviet Union let Mr Shcharansky and Dr Sakharov go and if Angola released a South African officer. Just where President Botha got the extraordinary idea that he could link part of his domestic political scene with the release of the Soviet dissidents is hard to guess. Some speculation occurred that, because a high American official had recently been to South Africa, the Americans were in on the idea; but they were as astonished as everyone else. Israel may have had a hand in President Botha’s thinking. In any event, all of President Botha’s terms have not been met and Mr Mandela has not been released. The spy exchange, and the release of Mr Shcharansky, indicate some desire on the part of the Soviet Union to be seen to be reasonable, even humane. One view of Soviet motives in letting Mr Shcharansky go to Israel is that it will throw the dissident movement in the Soviet Union into confusion. However, motivation is rarely unmixed and the Soviet Union may be demonstrating that it is willing to go at least a little way towards satisfying American and European demands on human rights. Mr Shcharansky’s release is a reason for rejoicing in itself; if it is a forerunner of a gradual easing of Soviet attitudes towards its own critics, there is even more reason for rejoicing.