Soviet threat assessed

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32560, 20 March 1971, Page 17

Soviet threat assessed

(N Z P.A.-Reuter— Copyright) WASHINGTON, March 19. Prominent scholars from around the world opened a two-day conference in Washington yesterday to examine the extent of the Soviet threat in the Indian Ocean and came up with a wide variety of theories.

The views expressed ranged from alarm about Russian naval activities in the area to warnings that any attempt by the major Western Powers to extend their own presence there, especially with South Africa s help, would drive black African States into Moscow s arms. , ~ The conference was held by Georgetown University s Centre for Strategic Studies, whose chairman is Admiral Arleigh Burke, chairman of the United States Joint Chiefs of Staffs from 1955 to 1961. Dr P. Smit, of the Africa

Institute of South Africa ■ in Pretoria, drew a picture of peril from the Russian presence in the Indian Ocean and said that it should be met by military means. He described South Africa as the last bastion through which a defence line could be drawn. Arguing against the arms boycott imposed by the United Nations against South Africa, Dr Smit asked: “Can the West afford to have its actions prescribed by antiSouth African propaganda? “We may be needed as a whipping boy but is it really in the best ihterests of the West to ignore the strategic significance of South Africa, turn a blind eye to South Africa’s indispensable role of ensuring stability throughout an entire sub-continent and refrain from supplying weapons essential for the defence of the strategic Cape sea route?” But a number of the participants opposed Mr Smits views. One of them, Dr Larry Brown, of the University of Connecticut, said that "South African strategists, supported by American scholars and British politicians, among

others, have succeeded in using a non-existent (Russian) threat as the basis for undermining pressures against white regimes.” Dr O. M. Smolansky, of Lehigh University in Pennsylvania, said that the Russian presence in the Indian Ocean was not aggressive, but was in fact a defence against the introduction of American sub-marine-launched missiles in the area. . Dr T. B. Millar, of the Australian National University, played down the extent of the Soviet presence, saying that the Indian Ocean had four gateways and no single power could possibly control all of them and deny access to others.

He said the Soviet Union, as well as China apparently had military aims in the area but he suggested that any feelings of alarm in the West were premature. “The Indian Ocean is not ready to be painted a new shade of red,” he said. Colin Legum, of the London "Observer,” who explained Tanzania’s point of view, told the conference that South African leaders, along with the British Gov-

emment, had exaggerated the Soviet threat to justify the sale of maritime armaments to South Africa. He said that the reaction of black African countries to the arms sales might be to turn to Russia and other antiWestern countries for help in their struggle against Africa’s white regimes. He added that Tanzania feared that a British attempt to challenge Russia’s naval presence in the Indian Ocean area might produce the very conditions which Britain sought to avoid in defending trade routes. In a paper on Australia’s views, Coral Bell, of the London School of Economics, said that under normal circumstances South Africa would be a desirable member of any joint force or defence arrangement in the Indian Ocean. "But South African political circumstances are so far removed from normal, and the problems of reconciling any non-European power to an arrangement having South African membership or cooperation are so great, that any such project would be sharply divisive in Australia Jas in Britain.”