NEW TACTICS OF KREMLIN

Press, Volume LXXXVIII, Issue 26856, 8 October 1952, Page 9

NEW TACTICS OF KREMLIN

Warning By Mr

Acheson

(N.Z. Press Association— Copyright) (Rec. 9 p.m.) PITTSBURGH, October 6. “The steady increase of Soviet military strength will continue, even though it moves on carpet slippers instead of hobnailed boots,” said the United States Secretary of State (Mr Acheson) tonight. “We can expect continued, and even intensified, efforts to subvert, to drive wedges between the free nations, to exploit the real difficulties with which the free nations are confronted,” he said. “Indeed this is the clear warning to us of the most recent statement by Mr Stalin and the pronouncements at the Soviet Party Congress which opened yesterday in Moscow.” The growing strength of the free world was forcing the Kremlin to adjust its tactics of violence in its drive for world conquest, Mr Acheson said.

He said that the Soviet Union was placing great emphasis on the possibility of political and economic disintegration in Europe. Asia, and Africa. Mr Acheson, who was addressing the Union of Electrical and Machine Workers in Pittsburgh, said that disintegration and division might become the principal reliances of the Soviet Union in the period ahead. , There was no reason to doubt that whatever hope the Soviet leaders had for disintegration and division (of the West) would fail them. Just how the Kremlin would adjust its tactics was not yet clear, but if it became clear that the Soviet leaders were “silencing the rattling of sabres" and beginning to talk soothingly of stabilisation and broad fronts, or peaceful coexistence, this would be only a shift in method. “No Change in Purpose” There would be not the slightest change in the Soviet’s fundamentally hostile purpose against the rest of the world. A*- genuine reduction in tensions would require more than a few pronouncements bv Soviet leaders about peaceful coexistence. “It will take action.” he said. “One such opportunity for action will come within the next 48 hours when the Communist delegates are to return to the truce table at Panmunjon to give their reply to the recent proposals concerning prisoners of war made by General william Harrison (the chief United Nations delegate)." Saying that throughout the armistice negotiations the United Nations Command had drawn on every resource of patience and ingenuity in order to reach an honourable settlement, Mr Acheson declared: “We will not compromise with the basic principle that no prisoner shall be forced against his will to return to the Communists.