Britain Sets Terms for Attending Soviet Rights Conference
The British government will boycott the Soviet Union’s 1991 conference on human rights unless Moscow releases all religious and political prisoners, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher said Friday.
Thatcher’s government has agreed in principle to attend the international meeting but she laid down conditions in a written statement to Parliament.
She said Britain’s presence depends on the Soviet Union’s maintaining recent progress on human rights and added: “Much remains to be done.”
Apart from the release of religious and political prisoners, British conditions also include effective guarantees of freedom of speech, religion, emigration and the Soviet judiciary.
Thatcher said she wants implementation of promised changes in Soviet law, which would abolish or amend articles dealing with religion and politics.
She demanded that the conference take place in the same conditions as if it were held in the West.
Thatcher is expected to raise the state of human rights in the Soviet Union when President Mikhail S. Gorbachev visits Britain later this year.
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