Danish Official Criticizes Soviet Buildup in North

Danish Foreign Minister Uffe Ellemann-Jensen accused the Soviet Union on Tuesday of creating tension in the Nordic area by building up military forces on the strategic Kola Peninsula.

He told reporters at the end of a two-day visit to Warsaw that Polish officials had asked for his reaction to a plan put forward last month by Kremlin leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev for curbing East-West military activities in Europe’s northern seas.

Referring to the Nordic countries’ decision neither to have their own nuclear weapons nor to station them on their territories, he said this principle has created “the backbone for the Nordic area as a low-tension area.”

However, he said: “It is no longer a low-tension area. The reason it has ceased to be a low-tension area is the Soviet military buildup in the Kola Peninsula.”

The peninsula, where the Soviet Union maintains the world’s largest concentration of naval power, stretches well above the Arctic Circle and borders on Finland and Norway.

Scandinavian leaders have already reacted skeptically to Gorbachev’s proposals, outlined in a speech in the Arctic port of Murmansk, but Ellemann-Jensen’s comments appeared to carry new force for having been delivered in Eastern Europe.