Helsinki Review Talks Recess Amid Attacks by West on Moscow’s Rights Record

The Helsinki review conference recessed Friday for the Christmas holiday after a Western attack on the Soviet Union for its failure to comply with agreements on human rights.

The attack coincided with the Soviet announcement that dissident Andrei D. Sakharov and his wife, Yelena Bonner, have been granted permission to leave Gorky--where they have been living in internal exile--and return to Moscow. Ironically, the announcement served mainly to heighten the human rights issue here and to sharpen the language of the closing speeches.

At issue are the human rights provisions of the 1975 Helsinki agreements, formally known as the Final Act of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe. The 35 nations that signed the accord have been meeting here to review progress.

Speaking for the 12 nations of the European Communities, Timothy Eggar, parliamentary undersecretary at the British Foreign Office, told the delegates:

“Britain and its partners welcome the news of Andrei Sakharov’s release, and we naturally hope that this is the first of many such moves by the authorities in Moscow to ease the plight of those who have suffered in one way or another for their views.”

Closed-Door Discussions

The speeches reflected seven weeks of closed-door discussions on compliance with all aspects of the Helsinki agreements, which cover political, cultural, economic, humanitarian and security cooperation as well as human rights. The conference opened Nov. 4, with foreign ministers of all 35 signatory states taking part, and is expected to continue through 1987.

Unlike previous review conferences, in Madrid and Belgrade, the one here has been characterized from the outset by attacks on the Soviet Union, not only from the Western countries but from nonaligned countries as well.

Soviet Ambassador Yuri B. Kashlev hit back, accusing the United States, Britain and Canada of “donning the prosecutor’s mantle and distorting the essence of the Helsinki process by seeking to make it a tool of confrontation and ideological and political struggle against socialist countries.”

U.S. Ambassador Warren Zimmermann replied: “Statements of the majority of the delegates here, whether members of an alliance or not, represent an overall Western condemnation of Soviet conduct in the performance of human rights obligations. The United States is a critic, but it is not a prosecutor. The Soviet Union is a sovereign country and can determine for itself the effect of its human rights violations on its credibility with its own people and on its image abroad. None of us can choose for it.”

Zimmermann said he welcomed the Sakharov announcement but added that what is needed is “significant improvement in Soviet compliance.”

A ‘New Human Approach’

At a news conference earlier in the day, Kashlev said the Sakharov decision represented a “new humane approach” that will affect other cases as well. He did not say this in his speeches, nor did he say anything to dispel a skeptical wait-and-see attitude among the Western delegates.

Kashlev said that so far this year, 4,450 people have emigrated from the Soviet Union, and he said this represents an increase of 60% over last year’s total. In 1979, however, about 51,000 Soviet citizens were allowed to leave the country, suggesting that the Soviets have far to go to match their own past performance in this aspect of the human rights problem.

When the delegates return to Vienna in January, they will begin considering a series of proposals for improving or expanding the so-called Helsinki process. The Bulgarians have proposed a conference on environmental and ecological problems; the Czechoslovaks want a conference on economic matters, and the Poles want one on cultural affairs.

The Western powers deliberately refrained from putting forward any new proposals in the first seven weeks here, but they reportedly will begin to move in February. In particular there will be a response to a Soviet proposal, reiterated Friday by Kashlev, to have a human rights conference in Moscow.

The major diplomatic effort here in 1987 will probably focus on organizing a new European disarmament conference to replace the Mutual and Balanced Force Reduction talks that have been going on in Vienna for 13 years.

Just getting East and West to agree on a new disarmament conference, then organizing it, is likely to take up most of next year.