Truck reprisal feared

Press, 25 July 1984, Page 10

Truck reprisal feared

NZPA-Reuter Moscow Some Western diplomats in Moscow said yesterday that they feared the Kremlin might retaliate against West Germany’s detention of a Soviet truck, labelled as a “diplomatic bag,” by tightening its own rules on diplomatic transports. Diplomats said that they had seen no indication so far of any Soviet reaction to the confrontation over the truck, but many predicted Moscow might feel that it had been victimised and respond by delaying supplies to missions from N.A.T.O. States. “The whole affair has been a humiliation for the Soviet Union and that is not

something the Russians usually take lightly," one West European diplomat said. Moscow could “make life difficult,” for N.A.T.O. States by holding up transports at the frontier or might go even further by. redefining its own relatively generous attitudes to what counts as diplomatic baggage, he said. Although Western commentators generally held that Moscow had been caught out trying to stretch the Vienna convention on diplomatic rules, diplomats in Moscow said that the Kremlin may have been genuinely surprised by the fuss. The Soviet Union recog-

nises that entire trucks can be deemed “diplomatic bags” and allows West European missions to take in large transports such as building materials in this way. A spokesman for the British Embassy said that it had used such a method without any difficulties. “If the lorry is propprly documented and sealed then the Soviets cannot inspect it,” he said. Some West European diplomats said that they considered the entire dispute in West Germany had in fact been about documentation and that Bonn officials had been “misleading” by suggesting it was about the size of the diplomatic cargo.