The World - News from Jan. 11, 1989

The Soviet Union will begin withdrawing some of its troops from Hungary within a few weeks, apparently as part of the Kremlin’s plan to reduce its forces in Eastern Europe, Hungarian Communist Party leader Karoly Grosz said in an interview. “The partial withdrawal of Soviet troops from Hungarian territory is to commence within weeks,” the Hungarian news agency MTI quoted Grosz as saying in an interview with a leading Japanese economic newspaper, Nihon Keizai Shimbun. Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev announced in an address to the U.N. General Assembly last month that he planned to cut the Soviet army by 500,000 troops and withdraw 50,000 soldiers, 5,000 tanks and 8,000 artillery pieces from Warsaw Pact nations.