Rattling the Russians in Madrid

...The William Korey is International Policy Research director of B'nai B'rith...

...Neutral West Europeans, in particular, were nervous about the delicate tightrope maneuvers and fretted that the USSR would bury Helsinki as well as detente...

...This offer was presented on a take-it-or-leave-it basis, and the Soviets took it...

...And, indeed, Western diplomats still ruefully recall the disarray in their camp at the first review conference, held in Belgrade from October 1977 to March 1978...

...By November 11, with the clock artificially stopped, the agenda still had not been decided upon...

...In other words, any move on disarmament must not only take into account the Soviet Union's military presence in Afghanistan and its 30 divisions along the Polish border, but also be accompanied by corresponding moves involving human rights...

...Their inept stonewalling did more than harden the resolve of the West and cost them the support of neutral nations...

...The opposition of several European governments will still keep Spain from formally joining nato, but the U.S...

...Small wonder that President Reagan, who had voiced doubts about the usefulness of the conference during the campaign, has elevated Kampelman to sole leadership of the delegation in the second round...

...But meanwhile a high Italian official visited Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko in Moscow and bitterly complained about Soviet conduct in Madrid...

...A related U.S...

...He was assured that thecon-ference would definitely be held...

...Moreover, with Romania bidding for the status of hosting the 1983 meeting, fellow Warsaw Pact members were not inclined to resist the West on this issue...

...The fanfare underscored Party chief Leonid Brezhnev's personal aspirations for detente...

...Nevertheless, virtually every Western and neutral delegation, 26 in all, denounced the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan as a violation of a half-dozen key principles of Helsinki when the conference started...

...Then, at the last minute, the neutral delegates proposed an agenda: It called for six weeks of a line-by-line review of compliance, and an affirmation that the time and place would be set for the next review session two years from now...

...Thus, when it became apparent at the opening of the preparatory meetings in Madrid last September that this time the West was determined to document the breaches of the Helsinki accord, the Soviet representatives launched a filibuster...

...The Kremlin easily exploited the differences among the democracies, preventing a unified Western response...

...It was evidently hoped that divisions already resulting from the profitability of trade with the USSR would prove a strong factor in sundering the West...

...To many it seemed that the Madrid Conference might not take place...

...In meticulous detail, the West covered every item in Basket III (human contacts, freedom of movement and information, reunion of families, cultural relations...

...Specifics of the closed meetings??such as the complaints against the crackdown on Soviet Jewish emigration, and the psychological torment of the refuseniks and prisoners of conscience??were routinely leaked to the press...

...Although unanimity is impossible, everyone's diverse perceptions have been welded into a unified stand...

...This standoff inevitably attracted the media and focused international attention on human rights violations...

...Neither was forthcoming...

...aim has been to bring Spain closer to nato...

...Kampelman dropped the bombshell in a closed session, citing Brezhnev at a secret conclave of Warsaw Pact leaders held in Prague in 1973...

...Bolstering the ideological challenge was an extraordinary critique of the Soviet conception of detente...

...At least two Warsaw Pact members privately indicated to Western diplomats that they were prepared to criticize the Soviet posture should the compromise proposal be rejected...

...Such notions could be handled by an uncompromising stand that would exhaust Western efforts to implement them...

...The West's emphasis on individualism was contrasted with Soviet collectivism, too...

...Collective values bring with them suppression of the individual," declared Kampelman, and therefore violate the Helsinki Act...

...has all but transcended technical obstacles to tying Spain to the West diplomatically...

...Kampelman skillfully fostered the U.S...

...What is more, the West has been scoring heavily thanks to the skillful performance of Max Kampelman, the Washington lawyer and prominent Democrat appointed by former President Carter to conduct the difficult preliminary negotiations on an agenda and serve as co-chairman of the U.S...

...The revelation astounded everyone present, and sent Soviet delegates scurrying to seek repudiation (or verification) from Moscow...

...In retrospect, it is clear that the Soviet strategy before the official sessions began was one of calculated brinksman-ship...

...From the very start of the preparatory meetings, he displayed extraordinary talents as he tactfully negotiated the harmonious actions of the nato powers...

...news eased tension in the nato caucus...

...Cooperation, however, was to be preceded by inflexibility in an attempt to once again split the West into factions...

...The Russians were understandably irritated by Kampelman's vigorous performance...

...for losing out because of Cold War trade restrictions...

...But instead of another Belgrade, the Soviet bluff was met with American ad-amancy and tightness in the nato ranks...

...The second round at the Madrid Conference is focusing on "new proposals...

...Detente, a formulation bearing Brezhnev's own signature, was not to be discarded prematurely...

...delegation during the first round...

...Secondly, they sought to keep the matter of the next review conference up in the air, holding it hostage to accommodating conduct at this one...

...The culmination of 21 years of diplomacy, the signing of the Helsinki agreement was hailed by the Soviet press as the greatest event since the defeat of Hitler's armies, and the Final Act was termed "a law of international life...

...They were concerned about Moscow's commitment to the Helsinki process...

...With an eye toward developing proposals the allies could agree on, nato caucuses have been held two or three times weekly...

...Deputy Foreign Minister Leonid Ilyichev, the stocky, chainsmoking head of the Soviet delegation, provoked only laughter when he countered that this criticism was intervention in the internal affairs of Afghanistan...

...The Kremlin is pressing for a disarmament conference (under Basket I), plus increases in economic and scientific exchanges...

...During the first nine months of 1980, for instance, Soviet imports from West Germany jumped by 31 per cent to $3.3 billion, and imports from France rose 33 per cent to $1.9 billion...

...And it is this linkage that Kampelman, as President Reagan's representative, is now pressing in Madrid...

...Kampelman advanced this by inviting host representatives to nato caucus meetings, by being attentive to Spanish concerns and encouraging Spain's participation as an active member of the Western bloc...

...Abundant illustrations were brought forward, including the internal exile of Andrei Sakharov, the scandalous trials and dispersal of the Helsinki monitoring commitees in the USSR, and the sudden arrest of physicist Viktor Brailov-sky on the very eve of the Madrid Conference...

...we will be able to extend our will wherever we need to...

...aim of nato concord in the face of the disagreement within the alliance over Theater Nuclear Forces (TNF), and the new cooperative spirit is believed to have laid the foundation for a common approach to this divisive issue of Western European defense...

...In the Soviet view, that the Final Act included human rights as a principle (Principle VII) and called for the "freer movement of peoples and ideas" (Basket III) was merely a concession to win the West's acquiescence...

...At Madrid, Kremlin spokesmen harped on these figures, taunting the U .S...

...scarcely what the Soviets wanted...

...As for the Kremlin, the purpose of the Helsinki Agreement always was to legitimize the post-World War II borders of Eastern Europe...

...Yuri Dubinin, Soviet Ambassador to Spain and the number two man in their Madrid delegation, admitted to his Warsaw Pact colleagues that the Kremlin had not expected such Western firmness...

...The terms of the Final Act, though, provide that progress in one area is dependent upon similar progress in other areas...

...The Soviet leader had characterized detente as a device for shifting the international balance of power: "Trust us, comrades, for by 1985, as a consequence of what we are now achieving with detente...

...THE HELSINKI REVIEW Rattling the Russians in A^cidrid bywill,am k??rey MAX KAMPELMAN Madrid Just as the 1975 Helsinki Final Act was the quintessential expression of detente, the Madrid Conference to review the 35 signatories' compliance with its provisions??begun on November 11,1980, adjourned December 19, and resumed January 27??has turned out to be a sharp ideological confrontation between the West and the Soviet Union...

...Their aim was, first, to limit the review proceedings of the formal conference to two weeks at the very most...

...Decisions at the Madrid Conference are arrived at by consensus, rather than balloting...

...As a top-ranking Russian official later confided to a high-ranking American delegate, "We have instructions to work closely with you...