MOSCOW TALKS

Press, Volume CX, Issue 32359, 27 July 1970, Page 13

MOSCOW TALKS

Bonn Envoy On Way

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter—Copyright) MOSCOW, July 26

The West German Foreign Minister (Mr Walter Scheel) will arrive in Moscow today by air for talks with the Soviet Union which will be a major test of Chancellor Willy Brandt’s policy of improving relations with Eastern European countries Mr Scheel and the Soviet Foreign Minister (Mr Andrei Gromyko) will open their key discussions tomorrow aimed at a Moscow-Bonn treaty renouncing the use of force. The ground work was laid earlier this year in long talks between Mr Gromyko and the West German State Secretary Mr Egon Bahr, a close aide of Mr Brant.

But there is still likely to be some hard bargaining during the search for East-West detente, and how long Mr Scheel stays in Moscow will depend on what progress is made.

The Bahr-Gromyko exchages between January and May produced a preliminary draft, which later leaked to the West German press, which would commit Bonn and the Kremlin to respect the present frontiers in Europe and to settle any differences peacefully. Mr Brandt’s policy, while provoking fierce hostility from the opposition Christian Democrats in West Germany, has received qualified approval in the official Soviet press. Moscow, however, insists that West Berlin is a separate political entity within East Germany, and it is the divided city which might prove one of the vital negotiating points in the talks.