Soviets Tell U.S. Not to Contact Foes of Party : Gorbachev Aide Labels Baker’s Proposal ‘Interference’

The Soviet government reacted strongly today to Bush Administration plans to open a dialogue with opponents of the Communist Party, telling U.S. officials not to offer the opponents “encouragement or assistance.”

Secretary of State James A. Baker III said Monday that he thought it would be appropriate for the Bush Administration to “touch base” with the Soviet opposition as it has with the opposition in other countries in Eastern Europe.

Organizations in the United States have given millions of dollars to the cause of the non-Communist opposition movement in Poland.

Although it is not clear yet whether such assistance would be given to opposition groups in the Soviet Union, Arkady Maslennikov, a spokesman for President Mikhail S. Gorbachev, clearly drew the line at aid.

“I think the limit is if you meet people and discuss whatever matters you wish, that is your business,” Maslennikov said at a briefing.

“But if it is a kind of encouragement or assistance . . . (as it is) to some other countries, Poland and so on,” he continued, “that will be interference in the internal affairs of the Soviet Union and would hardly be tolerated.”

“I think to finance in any form . . . political forces which are striving to come to power would be quite immoral from the point of view of international relations, illegal from the point of view of international law,” he said.

“It’s one thing when you donate money for charity business, to fight disease or to help people in need, say after earthquake or any other disaster, and another thing when you are financing political forces,” he said.

Maslennikov said Baker’s comments about opening a dialogue with radical reformers who quit the party last week “cannot but raise questions and bewilderment.”

Baker had said it wasn’t clear whether reformist Boris N. Yeltsin and the others who quit the party “are going to develop any kind of multiparty democracy.”

“We don’t know yet if that is going to happen,” Baker said in Paris after a meeting on German unification. “If it does happen, we ought to approach it as we have in other countries.”