Germans to Send Food to Soviets to Avert Crisis
Chancellor Helmut Kohl said today that Germany will send emergency supplies to the Soviet Union in case of a food crisis this winter.
Kohl’s announcement came on the same day that Leningrad’s City Council voted to begin widescale food rationing on Dec. 1--for the first time since the Nazi siege in World War II.
Kohl spoke during a special session of Parliament in which he summarized his talks last weekend with Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev. The opposition convened the session to discuss the Persian Gulf crisis.
Kohl told legislators that during talks with Gorbachev on Friday, he promised that Germany would assist the Soviet Union financially “to the best of our powers.”
Specifically, he said, Germany will send emergency shipments of food to the Soviet Union “in case of acute supply crises.”
Concern has grown that the Soviet Union could face serious shortages of food and other essentials this winter, possibly provoking civil unrest.
Britain’s leading business daily, the Financial Times, reported today that the United States already has plans to aid the Soviets.
The paper said reports this week about plans for rationing in Moscow and Leningrad heightened White House concern about internal instability in the Soviet Union.
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