Soviet Hints Of Big War Aid Increases

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31364, 9 May 1967, Page 17

Soviet Hints Of Big War Aid Increases

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter—Copyright) MOSCOW, May 7. Communist officials are spreading the word that Russia is ready to step-up aid to North Vietnam significantly to match any further intensification of the war by the United States.

They are also hinting that the Soviet Government may impose a new freeze on Soviet-American relations if the United States war effort intensifies. The Russian message, expressed in vague terms, is being spread by hints dropped to foreign diplomats and selected Western reporters in Moscow, at the United Nations, and in some neutral capitals. Informed diplomats are convinced this is more than just a war of nerves, and that the Kremlin has serious plans for a steadily matching response —both military and political —if the United States sends more troops to Vietnam and if the scope of bombing raids increases.

“Everything They Ask” Communist embassies in Moscow have joined the whisper campaign by letting it be known through the diplomatic grapevine that the “Vietnamese will get everything they ask for.” They say the Kremlin has made plans for a stepped-up flow of weapons and equipment to Hanoi, notably sophisticated missiles, should they be needed, and that the plans are being projected for well into 1968. The Soviet Communist leader, Mr Leonid Brezhnev, the Prime Minister, Mr Alexei Kosygin, the Defence Minister, Marshal Andrei Grechko, and other Soviet spokesmen have all said in recent pub-

lie speeches that many-sided Soviet aid is continuing and can be expected to increase. Rail Obstruction

Usually reliable sources said the flow of aid to Hanoi had been improved by the ending of Chinese obstruction on the long rail route from Russia to Hanoi. The Russians accused Peking in February of hampering deliveries and

of substituting outworn equipment for new Soviet weapons. The Soviet Union stopped making the allegations in late February and Moscow sources said the problem was apparently solved by a new agreement under which North Vietnamese liaison officers took delivery of equipment on the Soviet border and supervised its transit across China.