TASS FORECAST 'No Change In Soviet Policy'

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30946, 30 December 1965, Page 9

TASS FORECAST 'No Change In Soviet Policy'

(N.Z. Press Assn. —Copyright) MOSCOW, Dec. 29. A news analyst for the official Soviet news agency, Tass, said today there would be no change in basic Soviet policy toward the West in 1966, the Associated Press reported.

A. Sovetov characterised as “wishful thinking” hopes for a radical reappraisal of the interpretation of peaceful coexistence by the Soviet Union. Soviet leaders who took over from Premier Nikita Khrushchev last year kept peaceful co-existence as the basis of their policy, but they have interpreted it to mean that relations with the United States had to freeze because of the Vietnam war. Sovetov, in an article for the January issue of the magazine, “International Affairs,” summarised today by

Tass, wrote: “The hopes for a possibility of peaceful coexistence with the Soviet Union are vain if the leaders of some imperialist power undertake aggressive steps against any other Socialist country." "Washington is following a line which combines military gambles with political manoeuvring and subversion,” the Tass analyst said. But he maintained that some West European countries are seeking “some form of rapprochement with the Soviet Union,” and said this represented an area where peaceful co-existence, as interpreted by the Kremlin, has “an ever widening sphere of operation.” Sovetov wrote that “a step and not a small one can well be made toward solving international problems next year. European Relations “The growing desire for normal relations among the European countries gives ground to hope that international tension will gradually be relaxed and better conditions will be created for rapprochement and cooperation in Europe.”

The Soviet leaders have been praising French Presi-

dent Charles de Gaulle among Western leaders, calling some of his foreign policy—as on N.A.T.O. and the Common Market and Vietnam—“realistic.” General de Gaulle is reported considering a visit to Moscow in the (northern) spring. Sovetov contended that the United States uses West Germany to counteract France and control Britain.

He said that it is “especially dangerous for peace that the United States relies heavily on Bonn to offset French anti-Americanism and to nip in the bud any desire by Britain for independence.”