In the Soviet Union
The ground war in the Gulf has RAISED FEARS AMONG SOME SOVIET OFFICIALS of a pro-Iraq backlash by Muslims in the Soviet Union. One Soviet Mideast analyst said President Mikhail S. Gorbachev undertook his peace initiative “partly to pacify the Muslim population.” There are an estimated 80 million Muslims among the nation’s 283 million people, and the Kremlin has weathered two years of secessionist and ethnic unrest in its southern Islamic regions. Soviet officials fear that pro-Iraq sympathies among Soviet Muslims could produce terrorism and anti-military actions.
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