U.S. Nears Ties With Mongolia, State Dept. Says

The State Department said last week that the United States is moving toward an agreement to establish diplomatic relations with Mongolia, an Asian ally of the Soviet Union and one of the most secretive countries in the world.

“We are having discussions with Mongolia about normalizing relations,” State Department spokesman Charles Redman said Friday. “We are hopeful these discussions will end with the establishment of relations between our two countries in the near future.”

Other officials, speaking on condition they not be identified, said contacts between the two countries were made at the United Nations, where Mongolia is represented, and that discussions about relations have been held since early last autumn.

Independent Since 1921

The United States has never had diplomatic relations with Mongolia, which gained independence in 1921 from China, its southern neighbor, and has been allied with the Soviet Union, its northern neighbor. Chinese leaders--both the late Nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek and the Peking Communists--reportedly opposed such U.S.-Mongolian ties.

The two nations were close to establishing relations in the mid-1970s at the height of U.S.-Soviet detente, but the negotiations ended without result.