Dispute Delays European Rights and Security Accord

Representatives of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the Warsaw Pact and 12 other European nations on Friday informally accepted a landmark human rights and security accord designed to enhance freedom in the Soviet Bloc and boost East-West contacts.

But a lingering dispute between Greece and Turkey continued to block final accord on a mandate for new East-West arms talks.

Diplomats trying to resolve the dispute between the two NATO allies reported no firm progress Friday, and scheduled their next session for today.

The American ambassador to the talks, Stephen Ledogar, said that Secretary of State George P. Shultz will not come to Vienna next week to wind up the 35-nation Helsinki review conference and formally approve the final document unless the Greek-Turkish dispute is solved. The two nations are squabbling about the zone to be covered by new conventional arms reduction talks.

Subjects of Dispute

Negotiators failed Friday to persuade Turkey to drop its refusal to allow its southern port of Mersin to be included in the new disarmament zone. The two are also arguing about whether to include a strategic triangle of Turkish territory near the Syrian border in the zone.

Turkey said Friday that it was standing firm on its position. Turkey used Mersin to launch its 1974 invasion of Cyprus, in what it said was a move to protect the Turkish minority on the island after an Athens-backed coup.

Ledogar said that Greece and Turkey will have to share the blame if their dispute unravels the arms talks and Helsinki conference agreements.

Shultz and the foreign ministers of the 34 other nations meeting here are scheduled to end the meeting in a three-day session next week. The meeting opened in Vienna in November, 1986.

The mandate for the new arms talks is supposed to be included in the final document of the conference.

NATO and the Warsaw Pact gave provisional agreement to the final document--minus the mandate for arms talks--on Friday after the 12 neutral and nonaligned nations at the conference worked late into the night to resolve outstanding differences.

Western diplomats hailed the final document as a major advance in human rights, but noted the key test was whether the Soviet Bloc would stick to it.

The 1975 Helsinki Final Act, signed by the Soviet Union, the United States, Canada and all European nations except Albania, contained commitments to free travel, information and other human rights that the East Bloc often violated.

The Vienna document “refined and defined the humanitarian undertakings in far greater detail than ever possible before,” noted Canadian Ambassador William Bauer, who played a prominent part in Western efforts to achieve good human rights agreements.

Reforms in the Soviet Union played a major role in securing the agreement, Bauer and other Western diplomats said.

If finally approved, the Vienna accord contains provisions to:

-- Allow religious education, the spread of religious literature and charity action by churches.

-- Resolve outstanding emigration applications within six months, and grant visas for family reunification within one to three months.

-- Facilitate tourism, allowing Western visitors to stay in East Bloc homes.

-- Provide much more information needed by Western businessmen trading in the East.

-- Allow independent groups to monitor their governments’ human rights behavior, and the state of the environment.

Annual Meetings Planned

In addition, the agreement provides for the first time a formal mechanism allowing any Helsinki signatory to take up human rights matters with any other signatory.

Annual conferences on human rights are planned before the next Helsinki review conference, scheduled in Helsinki in 1992. The most controversial meeting is scheduled for 1991 in Moscow. Canada has not assented to that meeting yet.

Other follow-up meetings planned before 1992 include an environmental meeting in Sofia, Bulgaria; a cultural meeting in Krakow, Poland; a forum on freedom of information in London; an economics meeting in Bonn, and a conference on security-building measures in Vienna.