Array Of East Leaders

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31195, 20 October 1966, Page 17

Array Of East Leaders

(N.Z.P. A.-Reuter —Copyright> MOSCOW, Oct. 19. The summit talks now in progress in Moscow have produced the biggest gathering of ruling Communist leaders for almost two years. Party and government chiefs from all the Kremlin’s six European allies are here, together with President Osvaldo Dorticos, of Cuba, and the party leader Yumzhagin Tsedenbal, of Mongolia. The most important absentee is China, which has not sent a top official to Moscow

since Premier Chou En-lai made a visit shortly after the overthrow of Mr Nikita Khrushchev. Neither North Korea nor North Vietnam is represented. Albania, China’s tiny Balkan ally, and Jugoslavia, the butt of some of Peking’s bitterest attacks, are also absent. China Absent Chou En-lai was last in Moscow in 1964 when he joined leaders of Russia and 11 other Communist nations in the 47th anniversary celebrations of the 1917 revolution. China stayed away when eight Communist nations sent high-ranking officials to a 19nation consultative meeting in Moscow in March last year. This was the meeting which called on China to join other Communist nations in prepara-

tion for a world Communist conference, but it did not condemn Peking’s line. Since 1964 the only largescale gatherings of Communist leaders have been summit meetings of the seven Warsaw Pact nations—one in Poland in January, 1965, and one in Rumania last July.

Mr Tsedenbal joined the other seven leaders in July for a one-day summit meeting of Comecon —the eightnation mutual assistance pact Two other major gatherings of the world’s top Communists were held in Moscow in 1957 and 1960. Both issued declarations setting out the principles of Communist unity, which Russia and China have both claimed support their own stand.