Kosygin Calls Vietnam The Top Problem

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31234, 5 December 1966, Page 17

Kosygin Calls Vietnam The Top Problem

(N.Z. Press Association —Copyright) PARIS, December 4. The Soviet Premier, Mr Alexei Kosygin, has called the Vietnam war “the world’s No. 1 problem,” and the main blockage to good relations between Moscow and Washington.

Answering questions at a luncheon yesterday of the French Diplomatic Press Association, Mr Kosygin called for settlement of the Vietnamese war on the basis of the Hanoi and Viet Cong positions.

This would mean a halt to American aerial bombing of the north and withdrawal of United States troops. Mr Kosygin, on a nine-day official visit to France, said the Vietnamese conflict was the cause of many international problems. All mankind was extremely preoccupied by the continuing fight in Vietnam, which must be ended as soon as possible, he said. U.S. Participation Mr Kosygin declined to slam the European door in America’s face—as President de Gaulle has proposed—and said any future conference on European security could be open to United States participation. Such a conference has frequently been proposed over

the years, to write a European settlement and guarantee security of European States. Mr Kosygin was asked how relations between Moscow and Washington might be improved. It was in this connexion that he mentioned Vietnam. “Good And Normal” He said the Soviet Union desired “good and normal” relations with United States, but that a settlement of the Vietnamese conflict was the condition of better relations. During the luncheon Mr Kosygin made these points:— West Germany must recognise, once and for all, that no exterior force can ever erase the existence of two German States—the Federal Republic in the West and the East German regime. West Germany must also accept her postwar frontiers.

Soviet relations with China were “very complex.” He dismissed the Red Guards as “only a detail” and no threat to peace. President de Gaulle’s withdrawal of French troops from the N.A.T.O. integrated command system was “an act of peace.” The Soviet Union, he said, favours dissolution of all military blocks and would agree to disband the Warsaw Pact organisation if N.A.T.O. was liquidated. France and the Soviet Union agree in opposing the proliferation of nuclear weapons, but differ on how to do it.

Earlier in the day Mr Kosygin criticised the “brain drain” of talent to the United States. He said European technicians could find ample opportunities to make progress in their homelands.