Russia has set deadline for Poles — diplomat

Press, 10 February 1981, Page 8

Russia has set deadline for Poles — diplomat

NZPA New York Canada’s former Ambassador in Moscow, Robert Ford, has said that the Soviet Union has given Poland’s Communist authorities a limited period to put their house in order. Mr Ford, who retired last year after 16 years as ambassador in Moscow, said in an interview with “Newsweek” magazine: “It’s clear that Kania has been given a limited period to put his house in order. Is it a last

chance? It’s impossible to tell now. “One must remember that the Russians waited six to seven months before actually intervening in Czechoslovakia in 1968,” he said. Mr Ford said that the Soviet Union under Leonid Brezhnev “refuses even to contemplate” economic reforms that many Poles believe can improve Poland’s system of government. “It (the Soviet Government) remembers the Czech

pattern where economic reforms soon led to demands for political reforms,” he said. Asked whether the situaiton in Poland could ever occur in the Soviet Union, Mr Ford said he did not think so “because of the apathetic nature of the Russian people and the way the system works there. “If change ever did come it would have to be from the top, not from the grass roots,” he said.