Arms moves likely during Gorbachev visit

Press, 12 July 1988, Page 8

Arms moves likely during Gorbachev visit

NZPA-Reuter Warsaw New Soviet initiatives on disarmament in Europe are expected to emerge this week during a six-day visit to Poland by the Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, according to diplomats from East and West.

They say Mr Gorbachev could signal partial Soviet troop withdrawals from Eastern Europe in a bid to demonstrate that Moscow is serious about reducing military confrontation on the continent. Mr Gorbachev will arrive in the Polish capital this evening for a tour which will take him to three Polish cities and a summit of the Soviet bloc’s Warsaw Pact alliance.

“Obviously we want to keep up the disarmament momentum,” said one Soviet official.

A neutral diplomat commented: “It would be unlike Mr Gorbachev to miss an opportunity to use a visit of this nature to refocus world attention on Soviet disarmament proposals. I would expect something quite dramatic.”

Speculation has focused on a pullout of the 65,000strong Soviet force in Hungary, but analysts ol communist affairs said a partial reduction of the Soviet presence in Poland itself could be on the cards.

Western military sources say the Soviet Union has 12,000-13,000 combat troops formed in two divisions on Polish territory, many of them protecting supply lines to

the Soviet forces on the front line of the East-West standoff in East Germany. Mr Gorbachev, who is due to hold two formal rounds of talks with the Polish leader, Wojciech Jaruzelski, will be making his first official visit to Poland since he came to power in March, 1985, and launched his “perestroika” reform programme. General Jaruzelski is also engaged in a project to restructure the Polish political and economic system. Ordinary Poles interviewed on Warsaw television on the eve of the visit said it could help their own domestic reforms.

A major issue that has poisoned the image held by many Poles of their eastern neighbour is the death of some 4200 Polish officers in Katyn Forest near Smolensk in the Soviet Union early in World War 11.

In a statement issued at the week-end, the banned Solidarity trade union called on Mr Gorbachev to say how the officers died. They were among a total of some 15,600 from Poland’s pre-war Army who disappeared in Soviet captivity. In an echo of proposals by some Soviet reformist commentators, the statement also called on Moscow to publish details of the Nazi-Soviet pact of 1939 which led to Poland being dismembered.

A bilateral commission of historians is now studying all available documents on the Katyn affair. New evidence has been produced by Moscow after the opening of archives under Mr Gorbachev’s “glasnost” policies. Mr Gorbachev, whose personal standing is high among ordinary Poles according to opinion surveys published in Warsaw, will address a meeting of the Polish Parliament, the Sejm, a few hours after his arrival.

Tomorrow, he will visit the southern city of Krakow near the border with Czechoslovakia, and on Wednesday he will tour the Baltic shipbuilding port of Szczecin close to the frontier with East Germany.

The Warsaw Pact summit, expected to be attended by top leaders of all seven states in the Communist bloc grouping, opens on Friday and continues into Saturday. Mr Gorbachev will fly home to Moscow on Saturday afternoon.