Word: helsinki
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...pitfalls. The Soviet team of negotiators in Belgrade-headed by Yuli Vorontsov, a sophisticated, tough-minded diplomat-wants to keep the October meeting relatively short, with a fixed "termination date" before Christmas. The obvious aim: to limit discussion on violations of the human rights provisions of the Helsinki accords. In addition, the Russians will press for what they vaguely term "positive criticism" that would stress future goals, rather than discussion of past abuses...
...background: During the negotiations leading up to the Helsinki agreement, the Western powers induced Moscow to accept the so-called Basket III clauses, pledging a free flow of people and information. In addition, the agreement contained a sweeping declaration to respect human rights. The Soviets complied in exchange for things they wanted: the Basket I and II declarations on military, economic and technological cooperation. The Russians evidently thought no one would hold them to their pledges. In Belgrade, the U.S. delegation, headed by Albert Sherer, a former ambassador to Czechoslovakia, is determined to prevent the Soviets from sliding...
Moscow was enraged by a White House report earlier this month that took Communist countries to task for a whole series of violations of the Helsinki provisions on human rights. Defending President Carter's active concern with the subject, the report argued that "interest in human rights does not constitute interference in the internal affairs of other states." In retaliation, the Kremlin denounced the new Administration and Carter personally in the strongest terms yet, stepped up a press campaign to expose human rights abuses (some real, some fancied) in the West, and undertook a new crackdown on human rights...
There has also been much counter-propaganda on human rights, ranging from the legitimate to the preposterous. On the subject of the free flow of ideas, Russian journalists have rightly pointed out that the U.S. has not widely distributed the text of the Helsinki document, as stipulated in the accords. A Warsaw newspaper complained that while Polish TV ran 2.3 hours of American movies every week last year, U.S. viewers were allowed to see only 6.4 hours of Polish films in the entire year...
...week's end the Soviets allowed a U.S. newsman to leave after a six-day ordeal that illustrated how seriously the Russians are taking their pledge at Helsinki to "increase the opportunities for journalists to communicate personally with their sources." In an action that was unprecedented since the Stalin era, the KGB forced Los Angeles Times Correspondent Robert Toth to undergo long sessions of hostile and often threatening interrogation in Moscow's dread Lefortovo prison...