Editor verifies leader’s illness

Press, 8 February 1985, Page 6

Editor verifies leader’s illness

NZPA-Reuter Rome The editor-in-chief of the Soviet Communist Party daily, “Pravda" said yesterday that the Soviet President, Mr Konstantin Chernenko was ill. This confirmed recent reports about the state of the 73 year-old Kremlin leader’s health. “I have to tell you that comrade Chernenko is ill,” Dr Viktor Afanasiev told an Italian journalist, Enzo Biagi, in a direct link-up interview between Rome and Moscow broadcast on Italian State television. “I am not in a position to say what the gravity of his illness is as I am not a doctor,” he said. “However, I know that he is still in charge of the party and the country despite being ill,” he said in a brief answer to a question asked by Mr Biagi. “We hope that this period will pass and will not be too long, 5 ’ Dr Afanasiev said. Last week a Foreign Ministry spokesman in Moscow said that Mr Chernenko, who has not appeared in public since late December, was taking a winter holiday near Moscow, although Kremlin aides have privately told Western officials that Mr Chernenko had cancelled his engagements owing' to. illness. Diplomats in Moscow said last week that the late president Yuri Andropov was also reported by officials to be on holiday in the -six-month absence before: his death from kidney . disease a year ago. ’ The state of Mr Chernenko’s health has been constantly speculated about among Western embassies in Moscow since he suc-

ceeded Mr Andropov last year, already in frail health. Western doctors have attributed Mr Chernenko’s evident breathing problems to emphysema, a respiratory ailment that can affect the heart. Dr Afanasiev gave no more details in his answer to Mr Biagi’s question, which was asked at the end of a short interview focusing on scheduled nuclear arms talks next month between the Soviet Union and the United States in Geneva. Dr Afanasiev said that the Soviet Union “intends to take part seriously in the negotiations.” “However, we are only prepared to effect negotiations on a basis of equality and independence.” If the United States did not take the same view, “the negotiations will be put to a hard test”. Dr Afanasiev said that the Soviet Union was prepared to negotiate fully on limiting space weapons and long and medium-range ' nuclear weapons. Asked about the recent guerrilla attacks against N.A.T.O. targets in European countries, . the ‘‘Pravda” chief said: “We . have always taken a stand .'.of . denouncing terrorist activities, and we condemn them. "We believe they are the result of a disorder within the countries concerned.”