U.S., Soviets Trade Charges of Rights Violations

The United States and the Soviet Union traded charges of human rights violations Wednesday at a 35-nation East-West conference called to review compliance with the 1975 Helsinki accords.

Secretary of State George P. Shultz said said that “a tragic human rights situation” continues to exist in the Soviet Union and among its allies in Eastern Europe and creates such distrust in the West that it is difficult to achieve progress on arms control.

“Arms control cannot exist as a process in isolation from other sources of tension in East-West relations,” Shultz said. “When justice is violated and freedom is denied, then the potential for conflict inevitably grows between nations, and the delicate process of building confidence, cooperation and security is undermined.”

Shultz cited the internal exile of Andrei D. Sakharov, a physicist who won the 1975 Nobel Peace Prize, and the imprisonment of members of the Soviet activist group monitoring the Helsinki accords as proof that the Soviet regime mistreats its citizens.

Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard A. Shevardnadze countered by charging the United States with “violations of fundamental human rights of a systematic and massive nature” and referred to unemployment and the homeless in American cities.

Proposes Moscow Conference

Shevardnadze then proposed a conference to be held in Moscow of the 35 nations that signed the 1975 Helsinki agreements on security and cooperation in Europe. Such a conference, he said, would “consider the whole range of such problems, including human contacts, information, culture and education.”

Anatoly G. Kovalev, a first deputy Soviet foreign minister, said at a news conference later that Moscow hopes for “a large-scale conference” so that delegates “can feel for themselves our hospitality and view our position and learn much from meeting our people.”

Kovalev also announced new legal measures to speed up Soviet processing of emigration cases. The move mirrors a “far-reaching process toward serious reforms that will introduce more democracy to our country,” he said.

Gennady I. Gerasimov, a spokesman for the Soviet Foreign Ministry, said that because of a recent decision by the Soviet Council of Ministers, Soviet agencies will be required starting Jan. 1 to rule on exit visas within one month, except in unspecified “special cases.”

In cases of a death in a family, foreign travel requests will have to be answered within three days, Gerasimov said. Some restrictions on travel will continue to apply to “citizens privy to state secrets, involved in unresolved property issues, or charged with a crime,” he said.

Emigration Effect Unclear

Reporters challenged Gerasimov about cases of individuals and families refused exit visas for the West. But the Soviet official, declining to respond on a case-by-case basis, said raising such matters at a news conference was “demagoguery . . . (which) ignores the bigger picture.”

Kovalev left unclear whether the new rules would increase emigration to the West. He said only that “cases involving family reunions as well as (Soviet citizens with spouses in the West) will be dealt with in a spirit of humaneness.”

Western human rights organizations have charged that many Soviet citizens have been refused exit visas for allegedly knowing “state secrets” and that such people often lose their jobs or their right to higher education once they apply to go overseas.

Kovalev responded, “I want to convince this audience that great efforts are being made in the direction of ordinary human contacts. . . . But we are sometimes dealing with tragedies that don’t lend themselves to easy solutions.”

Meanwhile, Danish Foreign Minister Uffe Ellemann-Jensen, who is to address the conference today, disclosed that he will propose a human rights conference in Copenhagen “to re-establish balance between disarmament, economic cooperation and human relations.”

Shultz Stresses Compliance

But Shultz, in his speech, emphasized that the focus now must be on compliance with existing agreements.

“Escape from the violation of existing commitments cannot be found in the flight to new commitments,” Shultz said. He denounced the “unofficial barrier that has divided the continent and its people,” and continued:

“This barrier is not of Western construction. The members of the Atlantic Alliance and the various neutral and nonaligned nations of Europe have not forced the division of families nor denied our citizens the right of free movement. We have not sought to cut our societies off from competing ideas through press censorship, radio jamming or other means. We have not used threats or armed intervention to enforce bloc discipline upon individual countries.”

As at previous meetings, in Belgrade and Madrid, the purpose of the meeting here is to review compliance with the Final Act, or declaration, of the 1975 Helsinki Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe. The declaration pledges the signatory countries--the United States, the Soviet Union and 33 other countries--to respect “fundamental freedoms, including the freedom of thought, conscience, religion or belief.”