Andropov wants old intimacy’

Press, 7 June 1983, Page 11

Andropov wants old intimacy’

NZPA-Reuter Washington The Soviet leader, Yuri Andropov, wants the United States and Moscow to return to the friendship they had during the Second World War, says a former United States Ambassador in Moscow, Averell Harriman. ' Mr Harriman, who served in Moscow during the war, and his wife had a private 80-minute meeting with Mr Andropov last week which they called “direct and frank.” i “He wants to get back on a relationship which he described as our intimacy during the war. And he said, ‘You were part of it and together we beat Hitler and we want to get back to that same sort of relationship’,” Mr Harriman, who is 91, said during an American A.B.C. television, interview. Asked if there were a single problem that stood out as being of serious concern to Mr Andropov, Mr Harriman replied: “Yes, the normalisation of rotations.” He said that thejunited

States should seize the chance to improve ties. Mr Andropov had used the word “normal” several times and in different aspects, but Mr Harriman said that any improvement. in relations would require effort from Moscouk,and Washington.