Brezhnev visit shows stubborn line to China

Press, 7 April 1978, Page 6

Brezhnev visit shows stubborn line to China

NZPA-Reuter Moscow Mr Leonid Brezhnev, the Russian leader, has watched a Russian military exercise near the disputed border with China, apparently to demonstrate to the Chinese that their recent call for the Kremlin to pull back its huge frontier army will get no response. Mr Brezhnev saw infantry, (tanks, and planes fight a mock battle near Khabarovsk, only 40km from China. Nearby is the Ussuri River, where a disputed islahd {caused clashes in 1969 when dozens of Russian and Chinese soldiers were reported to have been killed. The Soviet Union is believed to have 43 divisions along its frontier in central

Asia and the Far East, and last month China urged that they be pulled back. The Chinese were replying to a Russian proposal for improved relations, and they argued that, with half a i million Russian troops just the border, these were not possible. Last Saturday the Russian Communist Party newspaper, “Pravda,” put the Kremlin’s counter-argument — that to withdraw would open the way for China to grab wide tracts of Russian territory which it claims in Siberia and the Far East. The presence of Mr Brezhnev at the war games appeared to be intended to bring home to the Chinese the Kremlin’s rejection of their demand. Peking claims several

'thousand square kilometres lof the Khabarovsk area, {where much of the present 'frontier is formed by the Amur River and Ussuri River. Mr Brezhnev, chairman of the Russian defence council as well as President and Communist Party chief, congratulated the motorised infantry, artillery, tank, and air force units which took part in the exercise, the Soviet news agency, Tass, reports. The troops had displayed a “masterly delivery of fire from all types of weapons,” Mr Brezhnev said. Military vigilance has been a keynote of his Siberian tour, his first extended trip ’into the interior for several ■ years.