Word: tass
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Late last week, the official Soviet news agency TASS announced an event that may offer further insight into Chernenko's condition: Greek Prime Minister Andreas Papandreou will make an official visit to Moscow in mid-February. Because Papandreou is a head of government rather than a head of state, protocol requires only that he be received by Soviet Premier Nikolai Tikhonov. But Moscow has been courting Papandreou's socialist government assiduously of late, and Chernenko, health permitting, would almost certainly want to take part in Kremlin talks with the Greek visitor...
...Warsaw Pact meeting in Sofia, Bulgaria, last week was to have been the first gathering of the seven-member organization's top leaders since January 1983. It was considered particularly significant since it followed the resumption of U.S.-Soviet arms talks. Then came the brief announcement from TASS: the conference had been postponed. To many Kremlin watchers, there was only one possible explanation, as voiced by a senior British diplomat: "A deterioration in Soviet President Konstantin Chernenko's health...
...degree of linkage between the three sets of talks was left deliberately vague in the Geneva communique, and the two sides began arguing over it as soon as the conference ended. The Soviet news agency TASS asserted, in the name of the Soviet Politburo, that "only the strict observance" of the Geneva formula "in all of its parts can assure real progress." That seemed to be a warning that any deal must involve agreements in all three sets of talks, including the one involving Star Wars. Paul Nitze, the veteran negotiator who is now a special arms-control adviser...
...willing to proclaim formally. Who is doing the talking is easy to guess, however, especially when the briefings are widely publicized in advance, as McFarlane's was. Certainly Moscow should have no trouble figuring it out; the briefings are open to the foreign press, including the Soviets' TASS correspondent...
...rare confession of a Soviet mistake, the Soviet news agency TASS said the missile went off course after it was launched during an exercise in the Barents Sea, "and disappeared in a westerly direction." The apologetic tone contrasted sharply with the Soviet reaction following similar events. When, for example, a Soviet submarine was detected in shallow waters near a Swedish naval base in 1981, Moscow denied that Swedish waters had been violated, and it accused the Swedes of trying to create an anti-Soviet atmosphere. As for the misguided missile, as this week began it was still missing...