Moscow Kinder To Nixon

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31841, 20 November 1968, Page 17

Moscow Kinder To Nixon

(N.Z. Press Assn. —Copyright) MOSCOW, Nov. 19.

These are hard days for Richard Nixon in most of the European capitals, but in Moscow, where he has never been a hero, he is being treated with scentical restraint, writes James Reston, of the New York Times News Service.

The contrast is remarkable. In Western Europe, Mr Nixon has replaced Jacqueline Onassis on the magazine covers. The editors are (demanding instant analysis of the American President-elect. The writers are supplying it by the yard out of the New York and Washington news-' paper morgues, which are full of the unhappiest chapters in Mr Nixon’s life, and the European cartoonists are making Herblock’s (a cartoonist) Nixon caricatures look almost angelic. But Moscow is different.

Officials in Moscow are playing it cozy. The last time Mr Nixon was in Moscow getting ready for the 1968 election campaign, he hoped to talk to the leading characters of the Soviet regime, but was ignored. The time before that, he eame trying to see Mr Nikita Khrushchev and was not only ignored, but rebuked.

Now, however, Mr Nixon is no longer Moscow’s favourite American villain. He is the

[next President of the United I States, and the Soviet officials are treating his office, if not ■him, with calculated respect. Unlike the Western European press, which is concentrating on all Mr Nixon’s political adventures with Jerry Voorhees, Helen Gahagan Douglas, Alger Hiss, Joe McCarthy, and Spiro Agnew, the Soviet press is avoiding Mr Nixon’s anti-Communist past and concentrating on his “pragmatic” approach to present and future problems.

“We know all about Nixoh’s past,” an editor of “Pravda" said yesterday. “But we are more interested in his future acts than his past speeches.” “We are ready to continue contact with Nixon on political questions the same as with President Johnson,” a Foreign Office official said yesterday. “What we observed in studying his statements during the election is that he seems to be interested primarily in the politics of force, and all dialogues of the past, on this basis, have failed.

“But his speeches have also contained some realistic notes. He seems to recognise the need for realistic contacts and we support this idea, but not on the basis of force.” Foreign Office officials in Moscow have noted also Mr Nixon’s emphasis on the importance of “summit conferences” between the leaders of the United States and the Soviet Union. “But summit meetings must be prepared with the greatest attention to detail," a Foreign Office official said today. “It is not enough just to talk. The last one at GJass-

boro was not carefully prepared.”

The attitude of officials and editors at “Pravda” and “Izvestia” toward Mr Nixon, however, is not hostile, but cautious and impersonal. They seem to be hopeful that Vietnam will soon be removed as a barrier to better relations between Washington and Moscow.

They are defensive about the recent Soviet and Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia, and eager to demonstrate that this was a limited manoeuvre to defend the Socialist nations and not a prelude to new military adventures against Rumania, Jugoslavia or West Germany. “The Soviet Union does not want more power,” an editor of “Pravda” said. “It does not want more land. It does not want contributions from Czechoslovakia. It is not an occupation force in Prague. The talk in the West of Soviet acts against Jugoslavia and Rumania and West Germany is hysterical nonsense invented by publicists in your part of the world.” This, at least, is the official line here for the present. Senator Albert Gore and Senator Clairborne Pell, both Democrats, are visiting Moscow now, and they are not only being well received in the highest quarters but are being urged to believe that, despite all the confusion of the election and the differences between Washington and Moscow on Vietnam, the Soviet Government is eager to talk about the control of! military arms. The talk here about Mr 1

[Nixon is not personal, as in Western Europe, and not historical, but practical and even clinical.

“This is a time for waiting,” a Soviet official said. “We are interested in Mr Nixon’s appointments of Robert Murphy to advise him between now and January 20, but we will make our judgments on Mr Nixon’s future acts and not on his past speeches. “We are not thinking primarily about good relations with Mr Nixon but about better relations with the United States. We are a country of many peoples, and we have no zoological hatredfor Americans.” The editors at “Izvestia” seemed to be more sceptical and critical of Mr Nixon's past, but repeated the same line.

“It is difficult to remove the picture of Richard Nixon in our people’s minds,” they said, "but we are not trying to exploit the past. We must deal with his future acts. The propaganda picture of him will only be removed by acts.”

In short, official Moscow is not concentrating, like Western Europe, on the anti-Com-munist record of the Presi-dent-elect. It is being almost elaborately calm, except on Czechoslovakia, it is not drumming on Vietnam, but assuming a settlement of that war in the Paris talks.

It is waiting and hoping that Vietnam will be settled and Prague forgotten and it is talking more objectively about Richard Nixon than it has ever <jone in the past.