Soviets put a smile into peace talk

Press, 25 July 1986, Page 6

Soviets put a smile into peace talk

By SYDNEY WEILAND, of Reuter London In a sharp reversal of tactics, the Soviet Union has embarked on a conspicuous campaign designed to show Western Europe a more flexible stance on arms control. The policy of smiles and patient explanation, dubbed by some Western officials as a "charm offensive,” results from a decision by the Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, to overhaul Moscow’s creaking propaganda and public relations machinery. The campaign, in top gear since May, is multifaceted: it has produced a rash of visits, Soviet emissaries have fanned out across Europe to explain Mr Gorbachev’s arms proposals, and Soviet officials have suddenly become more accessible.

A busy schedule of visits took the French President, Mr Francois Mitterrand, to Moscow in July, and the Soviet Minister, Mr

Eduard Shevardnadze, to London, the first such visit to the British capital in 10 years.

The West German Foreign Minister, Mr Hans-Dietrich Genscher, went to Moscow this week.

Each foray has been used to emphasise Moscow’s proposals, and to press the Europeans to lean on the American President, Mr Ronald Reagan, for an answer to the latest Soviet arms plan, tabled on June 11, which the Soviet leader has said is overdue. A British official said Mr Shevardnadze had been unpolemical and expressed strong interest in improving relations with Britain and other Western countries, and “gave the impression that Soviet arms negotiators would be allowed greater flexibility.”

Mr Shevardnadze used his London visit to announce the opening of talks on nuclear test ban problems with the United States. In the same week the Soviets

ently significant concessions at a Stockholm conference on reducing the risk of surprise attack. British officials said that a surprise decision to send a Soviet general to testify on arms control before a British Parliamentary committee was a unique switch in Moscow’s style.

After the Chernobyl nuclear accident in April Moscow was criticised for holding back information but Mr Gorbachev quickly bounced back, using the incident as a launchingpad for new proposals on controlling the use of nuclear energy. Moscow also sent a Soviet official to testify on Chernobyl before a United States congressional panel. The Supreme Soviet has proposed an exchange of visits with foreign relations committees in the United States Congress. “There’s no question they are occupying the presentational high ground,” a N.A.T.O. diplomat says. The tactics shifted after

the failure of a Soviet campaign to frighten Western Europe into abandoning the deployment of medium-range missiles — the weapons were deployed in 1983 — and the collapse earlier this year of an attempt to divide N.A.T.O. allies frpm the United States over a Soviet-sponsored deal on European-based rockets. Mr Gorbachev has also failed to score the propaganda success the Kremlin expected with a unilateral nuclear test ban pause announced in August last year, and Since prolonged. Western analysts say there is evidence the new look resulted from a meeting at Moscow in May when ambassadors and other senior officials were assembled to hear Mr Gorbachev’s scathing critique of the country’s propaganda machine. This was linked with new ambassadorial appointments to capitals including London, Bonn and Paris, and the creation of a tight forejgn policy planning I

unit in Moscow, led by Anatoly Dobrynin, the long-time Ambassador to Washington.

The ambassadors were carefully selected “to show the outgoing face of Soviet diplomacy,” a West European expert says. Leonid Zamyatin, for years a high-level and often acerbic spokesman in Moscow, turned up as an affable Ambassador to London.

Yuli Kvitsinsky, a veteran arms negotiator, went to Bonn, and a former Deputy Prime Minister, Yakov Ryabov, was switched to the embassy in Paris. The chief arms negotiator, Viktor Karpov, made two visits to Bonn in a month, other senior envoys were dispatched around Europe to outline details of Mr Gorbachev’s arms plan, outlined in June, which offers strategic missile cuts of 30 per cent provided Mr Reagan limits research on spacebased defence to laboratory models for 15 years. Analysts say Mr Gorbachev appears to has® re-

jected the heavy-handed wedge-driving that characterised Soviet policy towards the N.A.T.O. allies in the past, in favour of a nuanced, phased policy designed to convince Western Europe that his arms initiatives are viable.

The hope, analysts say, is that the Europeans will convey Soviet reasonableness to Washington and persuade Mr Reagan that Mr Gorbachev means business when a United States-Soviet summit meeting is eventually held.

Since he came to power in March 1985, Mr Gorbachev has sought to preempt the West with several arms proposals, highly publicised to give the impression of movement by Moscow while Mr Reagan seemed to be refusing to give way. Some Western experts question whether the publicity has succeeded: they say arms control has become so complex and the missile figures so confusing that most ordinary people switch off.

Nevertheless, Moscow has had much success in dominating the headlines and scoring attention in prime television time, and Mr Reagan has often been portrayed in a negative role.

Much of the Soviet campaign appears to be focused on getting America’s allies to use their undoubted persuasiveness with Washington, and in the longer term to influence Western voters.

Elections are due in West Germany next year and may take place in Britain also.

Visiting Warsaw in July, Mr Gorbachev denied that Moscow was seeking to drive a wedge between Europe and Washington, but said, “The independent policies of some European States are being kidnapped and taken across the seas.”

In Moscow, he told Mr Mitterrand that Europe was “large enough for it to speak more definitely and confidently on its (ovm) behalf.”