Word: kekkonens
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...talent as a gracious host. Already this year, the President has welcomed, feted -and in most cases, charmed-more than 150 special foreign guests, ranging from heads of state to ambassadors. Last week the President rolled out the red carpet for two visitors: Finland's President Urho Kaleva Kekkonen, 61, and Liberia's President William V. S. Tubman...
Locked in a virtual Russian bear hug by geography and two valiant but lost wars, the Finns have kept a delicate independence by what President Urho Kaleva Kekkonen, 60, has called the ability "to live on fine distinctions." Last week, in one of the Finns' finest distinctions yet, representatives of Western Europe's economic Outer Seven gathered in Helsinki's Smolna Palace to sign a treaty with Finland creating the Finland Association-a legal fiction that enables Finland to be a part of the European Free Trade Area (EFTA) and share in the benefits of its lower...
When Britain set up EFTA as the "Outer Seven'' to counter the Common Market's "Inner Six," Finland was eager to join and make it eight. President Kekkonen, wary of riling the Russians, at first refused to broach the subject to Moscow. Only when the Outer Seven put through the first mutual 20% tariff reductions and Finnish lumber and paper exporters began to lose sales to Swedish and Norwegian competition did Kekkonen speak up. Khrushchev came to Kekkonen's 60th birthday celebration last September, shared a private sauna with the Finnish President, emerged to give...
Ironically, the new economic agreement with the West has roused domestic opposition to President Kekkonen, the strongest personality in Finland. What rankled Finns was that Kekkonen felt compelled to ask Russian permission to join EFTA (while neutral Austria did not). Kekkonen previously obliged Russia by refusing to let the Social Democrats participate in a coalition government, a concession that Finns considered a galling interference in their domestic affairs. Said one U.S. diplomat: "It is a conditioning process. If the Finns are conditioned to thinking that they must consult Moscow at every step, it will be that much easier for Moscow...
Late one night Kekkonen carried Khrushchev off to his lakeside villa, where the two stripped and sweated companionably for an hour in Kekkonen's private sauna, then emerged to talk serious business until 5 a.m. Next day the two issued a joint communique promptly interpreted as granting Finland permission to become a qualified member of the Free Trade Area in order to "remain competitive in Western markets." What the communique seemed to give might still be taken away when actual negotiations begin in Moscow in November (for Khrushchev also insisted upon "maintaining and expanding" Finnish trade with Russia). Nevertheless...