Advancing the Helsinki Process

...As late as mid-September, Soviet delegates were declaring in plenary sessions and privately that they would "never" permit Radio Liberty and Radio Free Europe broadcasts...

...The assumption was that it had been givenaquiet burial...

...This view was not uniformly shared by others in the Western camp...

...delegation, to be "light years" better than any previous Helsinki document...

...Military-security considerations, said a key diplomat, were the "dynamic" that propelled human rights achievements at Vienna to a record level...

...His listeners were stunned by the unexpected proposal, especially since the Soviet Foreign Minister, in the same speech, embraced Principle 7 of the Helsinki accord (which deals with "human rights and fundamental freedoms") and declared that Moscow "attaches paramount significance" to it...

...Solely with reference to "state secrets," a favorite hindrance device of the Kremlin, is the latest language still insufficiently precise to put an end to the capriciousness on the part of the authorities that has plunged so many Soviet citizens who have been refused permission to emigrate into the psychological horror world of Franz Kafka's novels...

...Evaluation of the process is to take place at annual month-long experts' meetings during the next three years...

...With respect to emigration and travel, the text, in most instances, either gives emphasis to the right to leave a country or places sharp restrictions on governmentimposed obstacles...

...The significant breakthrough was prompted by the West's linkage of progress in security matters to human rights compliance...

...And jamming of foreign radio broadcasts was barred...

...From the beginning the U.S...

...Nonetheless, the Helsinki standards have now been set much higher and made more specific...

...Leverage will continue to be used to advance Helsinki objectives...

...The revived proposal also began to receive support in some Soviet dissident quarters, provided guarantees were secured about access and Moscow took steps to substantially improve its human rights record...

...The USSR has agreed to a mechanism that has been set up in the U.S...

...Unhindered communication by mail and telephone was given a considerable degree of assurance...

...Consequently, in September this became the settled purpose of the State Department...

...Equally important, the Congress of Vienna concluded with a "Final Act" of June 9,1815, a curious phrase replicated only in the Helsinki accord—but as originally used, it literally meant the end of the Congress, whereas the current Vienna meeting set in motion an ongoing process...

...While estimates of the unresolved prisoner cases range widely, the consensus among knowledgeable people is that a fair figure would be close to 100...

...In a press conference following his Vienna speech, Shultz warned that if there is "lack of progress" on human rights "performance" by the Soviet Union, then "no doubt, the American government won't send a delegation...

...Few would deny, however, that the actions taken by the Soviet Union in apparent response to the American stance constituted notable progress...

...With the Soviet Union pressing for conventional arms stability talks (covering all of Europe) and additional confidence-building measures leading to disarmament, the U.S...

...Making the progress achieved at Vienna irreversible is the vital task now at hand...

...Another lever presented itself when Moscow began lobbying to have the 1991 human rights experts' meeting held in the USSR...

...Policy and the Helsinki Process" under a Ford Foundation grant...

...When finally adopted, the Concluding Document referred simply to undefined "strictly warranted time limits" that are "not to be applied in an arbitrary manner...

...Thus Moscow will remain under pressure to "perform" not only on prisoners and long-term refuseniks, but particularly on basic legal reforms that would institutionalize the changes Helsinki has been seeking...

...In the past, Soviet spokesmen had meticulously avoided any reference to Principle 7. Hence the general negative reaction to a Moscow human rights parley...

...The last two months of the year saw a stepped-up effort on the part of the Kremlin to comply with the Western stipulations...

...Several hundred participants were arrested, among them the distinguished playwright Vaclav Havel...

...took the position that performance was more important than the wording of the Concluding Document...

...The Helsinki accord certainly has not achieved all of its human rights aims...

...Secretary of State Shultz, in his speech on January 17, emphasized that Vienna marked only the "beginning" of the new process...

...At the same time, significant steps were taken toward realizing "a freer movement of people and ideas," the core aim of the 1975 Helsinki Final Act...

...Practically no one expected the last development...

...strategy had been "a means of encouraging continuation of the significant progress in human rights that has taken place in the Soviet Union...

...to anyone who wishes to participate in this meeting...

...On October 13, Washington announced that it would consider the Moscow request "in the light of significant steps by the Soviets to improve their human rights performance and of credible guarantees of access and openness...

...Embassy in Moscow for the purpose of examining each of the disputed cases...

...These focused on access for all nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and the media, foreign and domestic, to the conference and the conferees...

...Until now, Helsinki follow-up conferences confined themselves to the reunion of families and did not deal with the right of emigration for all...

...THE VIENNA FOLLOW-UP Advancing the Helsinki Process BY WILLIAM KOREY Viscount Castlereagh, the principal architect of the historic Congress of Vienna of 1814-15, described his objective there as being "not to collect trophies, but to bring back the world to peaceful habits...

...Not to be excluded is the 1991 Moscow meeting itself...

...The West was able to reinforce its hand by linking Moscow's objectives to a specific concluding meeting...

...The host government would have to assure NGOs the right to organize meetings and hold demonstrations, book fairs and press conferences...

...It stressed, too, that the U.S...

...On January 4, when the White House announced its acceptance of the Moscow conference, it stated: "The President recognizes that there is much yet to be done in the Soviet Union before that nation meets acceptable and universal standards...

...A private letter from then Secretary of State George P. Shultz to Shevardnadze on November 9 spelled out specific conditions that had to be met, including several demands advanced by a reluctant Margaret Thatcher...

...In 1815, security considerations were uppermost in the minds of the diplomats of the principal powers—England, Austria, Prussia, and Russia (and eventually France...

...Nationality and especially religious rights, though, wereclearly broadened...

...The West sought to get specific time limits into the accord...

...had at its disposal effective leverage to move the Vienna meeting in the direction of human rights...

...Approximately 500 scientists who have been refuseniks for over five years were kept from departing...

...Indeed, the meeting's Concluding Document was said by Ambassador Warren Zimmermann, chief of the U.S...

...Most important, a continuous review process has been set in motion...

...Romania, another signatory, has blatantly announced that it does not consider itself bound to abide by some of the rules it seemingly accepted...

...One hundred and seventy-five years later, on January 17-19,1989, asecond great Vienna assemblage of 35 foreign ministers from the East and the West, at a follow-up Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe, consummated over two years of deliberations with a major move in the direction of arms reduction and peace-oriented confidence-building measures...

...The difference between the two conclaves lay in their priorities...

...And it is to this process that the United States and the other Western countries must address themselves, for the human rights agreements that were reached require constant verification and further fulfillment...

...For if the Congress of Vienna primarily emphasized the freezing of the established order, its successor almost 200 years later stressed the contrary objective of continuing human rights improvements...

...At any time now, a Helsinki signatory can lodge a formal complaint about the human rights practices of another signatory, and the latter is obligated to enter into bilateral discussions about the charge...

...In short, if Gorbachev scored a diplomatic coup, it was at the cost of major concessions won by the West...

...Meanwhile, emigration was considerably eased for ethnic Germans, Jews and Armenians...

...WILLIAM KOREY, director of International Policy Research for B'nai ?'rith, is currently preparing a study on "U.S...

...The British Prime Minister, fearful that a human rights conference in the Soviet Union might simply be a "political ploy," wanted assurances on the emigration of longterm refuseniks and on the institutionalization of the liberalizing process through fundamental legal reform...

...Only one hour after the Vienna Concluding Document was approved, Czechoslovakia, a signatory, brutally cracked down on a Charter 77 demonstration...

...But by the early fall of 1988, Soviet officials from Shevardnadze down were once again promoting the idea with considerable vigor...

...Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard A. Shevardnadze first proposed the idea of a Moscow human rights conference on the opening day of the Vienna meeting, November 4, 1986...

...The feeling was summed up in an editorial comment of the leading Austrian newspaper: "This would be, so to speak, a debate in the fox den about raising chickens...

...The total number of refusenik families known to the National Conference on Soviet Jewry is 650, comprising 2,700 persons...

...Yet even as he pursued this diplomatic aim, the great British diplomat recognized the need to deal positively with a pressing human rights violation—the slave trade—which he was determined to end...

...Thus the East was repeatedly told that the conferences on conventional arms reduction and confidence-building measures it eagerly sought could not begin until Vienna ends...

...It soon became obvious that Party chief Mikhail S. Gorbachev saw it as a means of enhancing his own internal position as well as of further improving his external image...

...To be sure, the mechanism will scarcely guarantee implementation, but it is a meaningful beginning...

...During 1986-89, it was human rights that consumed the greatest amount of the participants' time and effort...

...His view was echoed by the delegates from virtually all the Western democracies...

...He did not have to add that other Western democracies would be similarly guided...

...But not every one of them was completely fulfilled—particularly with respect to the emigration of longterm refuseniks, and the release of prisoners sentenced under rarely used provisions of the Criminal Code or incarcerated in psychiatric institutions...

...Quite a few, albeit by no means all, long-term refuseniks were allowed to leave...

...Some 77,000 individuals left the USSR during 1988, the largest outflow since 1979...

...Most prisoners of conscience were freed, including all those who were convicted under the notorious Articles 70 and 190-1 of the Russian Republic's Criminal Code, which focus on alleged antiSoviet agitation and propaganda...

...The other two are scheduled for Paris in 1989 and Copenhagen in 1990...

...Embryonic implementation procedures have been put in place that will highlight and embarrass human rights violators...

...Yet at the end of November Soviet jammers were turned off, followed in mid-December by jammers in Czechoslovakia and Bulgaria...

...Inatough speech, Ambassador Zimmermann spelled out various conditions the Kremlin would have to accept before the West could even consider the Soviet bid...

...The initial Soviet reaction was one of sputtering anger, and for nearly a year afterward nothing more was heard of the request...

...The record of several East European countries is especially dismal...

...All of the incarcerated Helsinki monitors were similarly released...

...The advances made in this area at Vienna were nevertheless remarkable...

...In these circumstances the unprecedented establishment of a mechanism for improving compliance with the old and new Helsinki requirements is of special importance...