Soviet Envoy in China for Week of Talks

Soviet Deputy Foreign Minister Igor A. Rogachev arrived here Saturday for weeklong talks aimed at trying to bring peace to Cambodia and at paving the way for normalization of Sino-Soviet relations.

“The Soviet Union and China are not the immediate participants to the conflict in Indochina, but as I understand it, both our countries are very much interested in the settlement of the conflict,” Rogachev told reporters at Beijing’s airport.

“We see some light at the end of the tunnel,” he said. “Our spirit is a working one. We are going to roll up our sleeves, and I believe my (Chinese) colleague has the same feeling.”

The Soviet Union backs Vietnam and the Vietnamese-installed Phnom Penh government, while China has provided military and political support to a three-faction Cambodian resistance coalition.

Settlement Supported

Zhao Ziyang, general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party, said Friday that China supports a settlement that would establish a four-party coalition government in Phnom Penh and provide for an international peacekeeping force.

Asked whether the Soviet Union agrees with this formula for a Cambodian settlement, Rogachev replied, “You are now asking me questions that are on the agenda of my discussions with (Deputy Foreign Minister) Tian Zengpei.”

Rogachev was also asked whether the two sides are close to quote a breakthrough. “I hope so,” he said.

A Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman said last week that the necessary precondition for holding a Sino-Soviet summit--which would be the first such meeting since 1959--is that the Soviet Union must prompt Vietnam to withdraw its troops from Cambodia at an early date. Vietnam, which has about 100,000 troops in Cambodia, has pledged to withdraw them by 1990.

Hopes for Progress

Tian, who met Rogachev at the airport, said he hopes the talks “can achieve progress.”

Asked whether successful talks would lead to an invitation to Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev to visit China, Tian replied: “This time, what we want to do is exchange views on Cambodia. As for (discussion of) other Sino-Soviet issues, we’ll have to see what the conditions are. If the conditions are ripe, we can proceed.”

China and the Soviet Union were close allies in the early 1950s, but they split over ideological and strategic differences in 1960. Relations hit a low point with a series of border clashes in 1969. Political normalization talks began in 1982. Since then, border tensions have eased and there have been significant improvements in trade relations.

It appears likely that an informal meeting between the two nations’ heads of state will take place next month in Pyongyang, the capital of North Korea. Soviet President Andrei A. Gromyko and Chinese President Yang Shangkun are both scheduled to attend the 40th anniversary celebration of the establishment of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.