Gorbachev Improved U.S.S.R. in Human Rights--State Dept.

Mikhail S. Gorbachev improved the Soviet human rights performance last year and there “has been some relaxation in the harshness of repression,” but more dramatic progress is awaited, the State Department said today.

In its annual report on human rights in 169 countries and territories, the department also said it observed positive signs in Poland, Hungary, South Korea and Taiwan.

On the negative side, Richard Schifter, assistant secretary of state for human rights, told a news conference that North Korea is the worst violator of human rights.

The report also repeated a long list of conditions imposed by the Israeli government on Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and Gaza territories. But Schifter said the Israeli police action that has led to at least 49 deaths among Palestinians does not warrant cuts in U.S. aid to Israel.

On the situation in the Soviet Union, Schifter said, “We have not witnessed the dawn of democracy in the U.S.S.R.,” which he called a one-party dictatorship dominated by secret police.

“But there has been some relaxation in the harshness of repression,” he said.

In the past, dissenters and demonstrators in the Soviet Union were sent to Siberian camps; they are still beaten or harassed, but the overall new philosophy is “to let them be,” Schifter said.

He asked: “Was Mikhail S. Gorbachev, in this third year of his stewardship of the world’s first Leninist dictatorship, bringing about fundamental change, or were the changes merely cosmetic?

“The answer to this question, asked by so many observers, is that neither adjective fits. The changes were more than cosmetic and less than fundamental.”