Tass slams Stells ‘rhetoric’

Press, 17 December 1985, Page 6

Tass slams Stells ‘rhetoric’

NZPA-Reuter%Moscow

Tass yesterday accused the United States Secretary of State, Mr George Shultz, of anti-Soviet rhetoric and contradicting the declaration agreed at last month’s United States-Soviet summit meeting in Geneva. Commenting on Mr Shultz’s European tour, the official Soviet news agency said he had used his stay in West Berlin “exclusively to emnhasise what disunites

Western and Eastern Europe, but not what united them.”

“Resorting to outright anti-Soviet and anti-Com-munist rhetoric, in the course of his West Berlin press conference he exerted quite an effort to call into question the possibilities for peaceful coexistence in the European continent,” Tass said.

Mr Shultz told a West Berlin journalists’ society during the week-end that

the West did not accept the incorporation of Eastern Europe into a Soviet sphere of influence, and attacked the division of the city and of Germany. Tass said Mr Shultz tried to give a false picture of the summit, presenting the facts as if all positive results from the meeting were caused by the United States stance.

His persistence in West Berlin in defending President Ronald Reagan’s mis-

sile defence plans showed that some people in Washington still intended negotiating with Moscow from a position of strength, Tass said. It was difficult not to conclude that Mr Shultz’s remarks were contrary to one of the basic proposals of the joint statement at Geneva — that neither the Soviet Union nor the United States would strive to attain military superiority, Tass said.