International Chinese leader to make surprise side trip to Iran

Press, 15 August 1978, Page 9

International Chinese leader to make surprise side trip to Iran

NZPA-Reuter Pekjng .. ,J he chairman of the Chinese Communist Party '> 1 H a kuo-feng) left yesterday on an epoch-making iip o Eastern Europe that will include a surprise visit to Iran, the New China News Agency has announced.

it. is the first trip by a party chairman west ' of I China since Mao Tse-tung went to Moscow in 1957. Chairman Hua’s plans to go to Rumania and Yugoslavia — both praised in Peking for their independent attitude toward Moscow had been known for some time. But it came as a surprise when, in the course of its report on the chairman’s departure from Peking, the official agency said that he would visit Iran, on the southern frontier of the Soviet Union. The agency said that VicePremier Chi Teng-kuei, the foreign minister (Mr Huang Hua), and other officials would accompany chairman Hua. Mr Hua is returning visits 1 made to China by President Nicolae Ceausescu of Rumania and President Josip Broz Tito of Yugoslavia. : The chairman visited I North Korea earlier this l year, his first foreign trip since he succeeded Mao in 1976. The westward journev comes closely after another dramatic move of Chinese

: | diplomacy — the signing in I Peking on Saturday of a I peace and friendship treaty . I between China and Japan, y This buried enmities born ,j in war and was hailed as (Opening the Way to closer: ■links between the two giants' (of Asia, populous China and ieconomically gigantic Japan. I But Moscow condemned it, I objecting to a clause which! denounced '‘hegemony” —j the domination of one power by another — which it felt) was anti-Soviet.

The Hua visits to Rumania and Yugoslavia have been seen by diplomats in the Balkans as likely to upset the Russians, too. The trip, made at a time ( of heightened tension be- , tween Moscow and Peking, said one Communist diplomat in Belgrade last week. I would “be taken as an I affront by the Kremlin.” Dates for Mr Hua’s tour were not issued in advance. But Belgrade diplomats' said last week they expected him to go to Rumania first, | then spend about four daysj in Yugoslavia. , The diplomats noted that I the visits coincided with the; tenth anniversary of the So-viet-led Warsaw Pact in-' ! vasion of Czechoslovakia,i , I which crushed the Govern-I (merit of the reformist. Alex-1 , lander Dubcek, in August,! ' ;1968. • j One year ago Marshal' JTito, who is 86, was accord-1 I! ed a hero’s welcome in j I Peking. In previous decades ! J China has criticised the Yu-1 ijgoslav leader. ■I President Ceausescu is thei I only Soviet-bloc leader to I [maintain close ties with! I China.