Pushed to Brink by Libya Raid, Gorbachev Says

Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev said today that the United States harmed East-West relations by bombing Libya and was “pushing people to the nuclear brink.”

Speaking to 2,600 delegates at the East German Communist Party Congress, the Soviet leader said Washington had resorted to the “laws of the jungle” with its attack early Tuesday on targets in and around the Libyan cities of Tripoli and Benghazi.

“Washington has decided to teach the Arab countries a lesson in its traditional way,” Gorbachev said.

The attack makes clear “who is for peace and who is pushing people to the nuclear brink,” he said. “One can imagine . . . what would happen to humanity if the Soviet Union acted as the Americans do in the international arena.”

He said, “The Soviet Union and the socialist lands testify to their solidarity with Libya.”

Congress delegates and observers included Palestine Liberation Organization Chairman Yasser Arafat and prominent Arab officials. East German officials said a group of Libyan observers had to cancel its trip to East Berlin because of the U.S. attack.

Gorbachev said the air raid, along with recent U.S. nuclear weapons tests and the “increased (U.S.) threats” against Nicaragua, all were “expressions of Washington’s general course,” which he described as military and aggressive.

“One should not act as though the American Administration were not aware that Soviet-American relations cannot develop independently of how the U.S.A. conducts itself in the international arena,” he said.

Gorbachev also told the party congress that he would propose reductions in conventional military forces and tactical nuclear weapons across the entire European continent from the Atlantic to the Urals.

The Kremlin leader, who provided few details of his proposal, said he was taking the initiative for an East-West agreement on meaningful cuts in the ground and tactical air forces of European countries, as well as in U.S. and Canadian forces deployed on the continent.