Soviet Food Bid Reported and Denied : Briton Tells BBC of Order Linked to Nuclear Accident

The Soviet Union has asked the Common Market to sell it a huge amount of food because radiation has contaminated crops and cattle in the Ukraine, a British member of the European Parliament said today.

Richard Cottrell, a Conservative member of the European body, said in an interview with British Broadcasting Corp. radio the request was “absolutely” related to the nuclear disaster at Chernobyl.

Cottrell said the Soviets went through diplomatic channels to the Common Market headquarters in Brussels asking to buy “substantial quantities of surplus community (Common Market) food, including grain, butter, beef and skimmed milk powder.

“All these commodities would be purchased far in excess of the relatively modest amounts, in comparison, which we’ve sold to the Soviet Union in recent years,” he said.

But in Brussels, a Common Market spokesman said he had checked and was unable to confirm Cottrell’s statement. “So far as I can establish we have had no such request,” said the trading bloc source, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Cottrell did not disclose the source of his information. The British Foreign Office said it had no word about the reported Soviet request.

(Grain prices soared on the Chicago Board of Trade today, with some wheat prices surging past the 20-cent per bushel daily limit.

(“This (the reported Soviet request for food) was denied before the opening, but the market chose to ignore the denial,” said Dale Gustafson, an analyst with Drexel Burnham Lambert Inc.)

“The Ukraine is the breadbasket of the Soviet Union,” Cottrell told the BBC. “There’s no doubt that crops and indeed cattle have been contaminated by radioactive fallout.

“This now poses the Russians with a problem which will arise with considerable severity this winter: how to feed--not only their own people--but those in other Comecon (East European) countries who also depend on the Ukraine for their food supplies.”

Cottrell said the Soviets normally do not approach the Common Market headquarters in Brussels about buying food surpluses, and instead deal with food brokers in Paris.