RUSSIAN ATTITUDE TO WEST ‘CHANGED’

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31312, 7 March 1967, Page 15

RUSSIAN ATTITUDE TO WEST ‘CHANGED’

(N.Z. Press Association —Copyright)

GENEVA, March 6.

One of the outstanding features of the 17-nation disarmament conference has been a fundamental change in Russia’s attitude towards the United States and the West as a whole, United Press International reported.

The change reflects Moscow’s apparent desire to expand its communications with Washington toward eventual improvement of relations with the West.

The Russians have returned to the conference, now in its sixth year, bent on getting a treaty with the United States and Britain to ban the spread of nuclear weapons.

Diplomatic sources say the treaty is to be the opening move for a wider Soviet strategy, ostensibly aimed at achieving an understanding with the United States. The indications are unmistakable that the period of indecision in the Kremlin which has prevailed since the oust ing of Khrushchev more than three years ago has come to an end. “More Active Policy” The Kremlin leadership appears to be moving, if slowly and cautiously, towards a more active policy. The Vietnam war, which In the past has barred any meaningful Soviet negotiations with the West, is still a barrier. But the Vietnam smoke, screen is thinning. Gone are the tirades of Soviet and East European diplomats inside the conference chamber and in the corridors outside against “American aggression.” Gone also are the threats levelled less than a year ago against the Johnson Administration. Each Communist conference speaker opened his respective policy statement with a routine reference to the Vietnam war and American “aggression.” Desire For Agreement

But each in turn hastened at once to put on record publicly his desire for agreement on a pact in which the Soviet Union and the United States figure prominently. Each has hinted that the pact could be a pace-setter for better and greater things to come in the sphere of East-West relations. The Russians are not concealing the fact that in pushing for a treaty to ban the spread of nuclear weapons they are putting up yet another barrier to West German access to nuclear weapons and know-how. But on present evidence that no longer seems to be the sole purpose of their Geneva exercise.

Relations between Russian and American negotiators are markedly friendly and devoid

of the propaganda stratagems of the past. Angered though the Russians are by the Bonn Government’s latest opposition to the non-proliferation pact, they have nevertheless kept an almost unprecedented reserve.

Qualified diplomatic conference observers have little doubt that the Russians’ changed behaviour here reflects a policy switch in the Kremlin. The first indication came from the Rusians themselves last August in their direct contacts with American officials in Washington, New York and Moscow. The change also showed in their contacts with British diplomats in late autumn last year.

Since then there have been a number of private exchanges of what is termed in Communist diplomatic jargon “busineslike discussions.” The Russians have not been anxious to volunteer publicly their intentions or to reveal their motives. But those directly involved have little doubt that the Kremlin has written off any chance of reconciliation with China, not only with Mao Tsetung but also with bis likely immediate successors. “War Not Expected”

Moscow does not expect war with China, at least not for another decade, Peking clearly unable in its present state of nuclear inferiority to take on the Red Army. But after that, the prospects look more doubtful, and Russian who in the past angrily shrugged off any suggestion of a possible collision with their one-time ally, no longer appear too sure of the future.

Western diplomatic asessments now consider Moscow

to be embarking on a policy which aims at pacifying Russia’s frontiers in Europe to ensure that in any conflict with China it need not worry about two fronts.

Comedian Dead.—Mischa Auer, a Russian-born American comedian and character actor, died in Rome yesterday after a heart attack. He was 62.—Rome, March 6.