Flare-up at Belgrade

Press, 17 February 1978, Page 5

Flare-up at Belgrade

NZPA-Reuter Belgrade

A new East-West row has flared up at the European security conference, in Belgrade as senior delegates studied a French proposal designed to break a monthlong negotiating stalemate. The French proposal, circulated only among delegation chiefs from Western and neutral countries, was described by diplomats as a “middle road” between the positions of East and West.

Even while the document was being studied, major Western and Soviet bloc countries clashed sharply over what kind of a final document, or declaration, the drawn-out 35-nation gathering should produce. The conference, called to review progress in EastWest detente and the key

issue of human rights since the 1975 Helsinki Accords was due to complete its work by “mid-February." But diplomats yesterday said it was now likely to last until at least the end of the month. The Soviet Union and its closest allies drew angry retorts from Western nations, whom they accused of deliberately obstructing the work of the conference.

The United States, West Germany, and other Western countries in turn accused the East of trying to bulldoze the conference into accepting a final document without any real substance. A United States delegate, Mr Spencer Oliver, described a Soviet draft presented on Tuesday as inadequate, unrepresentative, and a trav'esty of negotiations in Bel-

grade last year on human rights, military and political detente, and economic cooperation since Helsinki. A West German delegate, Mr Wifried Hofmann, in an acrimonious exchange with the chief Soviet delegate, Mr Yul ; Vorontsov, said Moscow clearly wanted to avoid mentioning in a final document human rights and measures to promote military detente. Western diplomats said the 15-page French document, expected to be circulated more widely today, left out some issues which the Soviet Union had made clear it would not accept. But the French paper did include several references to human rights, and to socalled military confidencebuilding measures, delegates said.