CHINA ACCUSED OF ‘OUTRAGES’

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31319, 15 March 1967, Page 13

CHINA ACCUSED OF ‘OUTRAGES’

(N.Z. Press Association—Copyright) WASHINGTON, March 14. The Soviet Union accused China yesterday of causing “outrages” on the Chinese-Soviet frontier to stop trains carrying war supplies to North Vietnam.

A Soviet report circulated in Washington claimed that the Chinese authorities had created “unbearable condi-

tions” at the border junction of Grodekovo and at other points, effectively stalling railway movements.

A reporter for the Soviet feature agency, Novosti, reported in detail one recent incident at Grodekovo, which is near the frontier in Soviet Kazakhstan. On one occasion, be said, a dozen Chinese workers arrived at the station to take part in loading activities with expired visas. When they were told to return to their side of the border and put their papers in order, the Chinese retaliated by refusing to permit a train with Vietnam aid to cross the border. Two expelled Russian diplomats flew home to Moscow yesterday as Peking Airport loudspeakers blared out China’s charges against them. But there was no demonstration against two men, the first Russian diplomats to be declared persona non grata by Peking. The two diplomats, Mr N. G. Natashin and Mr O. A. Yedanov, protested on arrival at Moscow Airport that their expulsion was a "provocation.”

About 100 members of the Russian, East European and Mongolian Embassies turned up to see the men leave — after a week end of sporadic demonstrations outside the Soviet Embassy. The Russian officials apparently expected a demonstration at the airport similar to last month’s Incidents when Soviet women and children were evacuated.

But the only signs of antiSoviet feeling were the loudspeaker broadcasts and the usual placards denouncing Soviet revisionism on the walls of the terminal building The diplomats were ordered to leave on Saturday after the Foreign Ministry accused them of persecuting and dismissing Chinese employees at the Soviet Embassy at the height of last month’s antiSoviet demonstrations.