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negotiation that might lead to a mutually satisfactory reduction of force on both sides.

This is something I think our NATO heads of government are going to have to address their attention to when they get together at the end of this month. How do you maintain the support for the essential security policies in the alliance at a time when you are encouraging people to believe, and we believe ourselves, that a process of relaxation of tensions between East and West is possible, but only based on the maintenance of strength? We will need your help.

Mr. BUCHANAN. I like that kind of talk.

Thank you, Mr. Secretary.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. FASCELL. Mr. Hartman, obviously we see the Conference as a part of the process of opening up. But what is it the Russians want?

Mr. HARTMAN. I think that they are looking for their original objective. Since they could not get an official peace conference and peace treaty which would in effect write into international law the status quo in Europe, they wanted a conference which at least would give some impression in that respect. Over the years we have conditioned our participation in this process in two ways: (1) by trying to get agreement on some of the real problems, like Berlin, out of the way, and (2) to get them to engage seriously with us in a discussion of problems that we thought would genuinely lead to a reduction in tension-for example, an agreement to begin talks on mutual balanced force reductions in Vienna-and generally to promise a dialog which we think has important conditioning effects on general behavior.

If you are looking forward to a conference with 34 other countries for a discussion of all these topics, you don't want to put yourself in the position where people would say you are acting in an inconsistent fashion to the development of that kind of dialog and discussion.

We think that the kinds of statements that are being made, the lack of any legally binding character in these documents, offers a series of undertakings and policy statements by governments that point toward an improvement and a possibility of opening up on some of these issues which we think will be helpful in furthering our goals. Now obviously from the Soviet point of view they do have certain advantages. They are able to interpret, if they wish, a straight statement that frontiers should be inviolable without mentioning the fact that in another principle we have, with some effort, placed a reference to the possibility for peaceful change of borders.

There is no sure way of avoiding that kind of a differing interpretation, but publicly I think we have gotten and we will get documents which can be well supported publicly and which will serve our policy goals.

Mr. FASCELL. Where does the principle of peaceful border change appear?

Mr. HARTMAN. It will appear in the principle of sovereignty. One of the attributes of sovereignty is that borders may be changed by peaceful means and by agreement. This is a negotiation in which, in order to be able to offset the argument that inviolability is the only principle, we were instrumental in getting that provision accepted and in getting it put into the sovereignty principle. We did this also very much at the behest of the German Government where this is, of course,

a very touchy issue because we have all agreed on the Western side that the final status of Germany and Berlin will be determined only when there is a peace conference.

Mr. FASCELL. Aren't both of those principles regarded as norms in international law now?

Mr. HARTMAN. Well, I would certainly hope so, but it can stand repeating.

Mr. FASCELL. So the accomplishment would be a restatement of principles?

Mr. HARTMAN. It is a restatement of principles.

Mr. FASCELL. Agreed to by consensus?

Mr. HARTMAN. That is correct; with a lot of other things and particularly in the third agenda item.

Mr. FASCELL. Is MBFR the carrot for the continuation of CSCE? Mr. HARTMAN. Well, I don't know. You mean for a followup institutional process in the CSCE?

Mr. FASCELL. Whatever.

Mr. HARTMAN. I think the MBFR has got to have a character of its own. In other words, unless there is a balance of interests on the part of the participating states in the negotiations in Vienna to reduce forces on the central front, you won't have a satisfactory result. As for the link between the CSCE and MBFR, we felt in our minds, that as went into a conference we were not all that enthusiastic about a linkage. We thought something else more serious should be going on in the security area, trying to deal with the central security problems in reducing tensions in Europe.

The MBFR Conference began but it has not achieved results as yet. One reason we think it has moved so slowly is that the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact countries were very anxious to see whether or not there was going to be any result in the CSCE. Now that they see that there will be a result; this will enable them at least to claim that they have had this European-wide conference, to which they really attach a tremendous amount of importance. It is going to be quite a gathering, 35 heads of government getting together in Helsinki to say that there ought to be a new set of relationships among the European states. Once the Soviets see that that has happened, we think that there are other reasons why they should be interested in pursuing the Mutual and Balanced Force Reduction talks in Vienna and that we will begin to see some progress in that area.

Mr. FASCELL. Is MBFR in recess now?

Mr. HARTMAN. At the moment it is in recess but it will pick up again I think next month or the end of this month.

Mr. WINN. Mr. Resor.

Mr. HARTMAN. I think he is going to testify sometime this week. Mr. FASCELL. You say that a precondition to going into the CSCE was the resolution of the Berlin problem. How was that resolved?

Mr. HARTMAN. Well, we stated on a number of occasions in NATO communiques and in public statements of our leaders that we would not move forward to accept a European Conference on Security and Cooperation until there had been a satisfactory resolution and agreement on Berlin and on the negotiations between the Federal Republic and the German Democratic Republic. These negotiations had been going on for some time. By 1971 they were concluded and implemented in the following year. So it was at that point that we said,

all right, now we are prepared to go and have a meeting on European security and cooperation.

Mr. FASCELL. Is there unrestricted travel to and from Berlin now? Mr. HARTMAN. Yes. We think the agreements in fact have buttressed our rights there and have made quite clear certain things that were fuzzy or had caused some difficulty over the years on the original Berlin agreements in the postwar period. We think that this has led to greater stability there. There have not been any serious incidents or buildup of tension in the area. Procedures are established for settling any disputes about the terms of the agreement.

We think that this was a really important step in this whole process because the area of most tension was Berlin, the area of most disagreement was between the Federal Republic and German Democratic Republic because of the fundamental differences they have whether there will be unification and whether there will be a future German state. Therefore, before you got to a broader process of easing tensions throughout Europe, you had to deal with those problems. In fact, we think that they have been dealt with, that relationships have been building up between the Federal Republic and the German Democratic Republic. We waited until after this process had been complete before recognizing the German Democratic Republic, which we have now done, so those things were really gotten out of the way before we got to this Conference.

Mr. FASCELL. For 30 years now there has been no peace treaty and one could reasonably conclude that there will be another 30 years without a peace treaty.

Mr. HARTMAN. That could be.

Mr. FASCELL. One could therefore conclude that a peace treaty is not needed from the Russian point of view and that the negotation agreement on a set of principles satisfactory to the Soviet bloc would be all that is required.

In our effort to achieve our objectives in terms of opening up societies and a restatement of humanitarian principles it would seem to me that the restatement of those principles, while desirable, is really not an action program.

What specific action, if any, would we interpret as an acceptance of the principles for which all the Western and neutrals have been working for?

Mr. HARTMAN. Well, it seems to me that once the agreements of this Conference have been completed, we have to continue to do some of the things that we have been doing bilaterally. Perhaps we can encourage some multilateral approaches in these fields but the exchanges that have been going on should continue the cultural and the scientific exchanges, the greater amount of tourism, the greater amount of exchange of information, as a way of beginning to change the character of the societies-I mean we have open societies on our side; everything is freely accessible, people know what is going on. We think that there is some progress in this area-people are moving around more, there are some agreements that are taking place that have been negotiated for a movement of people. We are not the only ones, for example, who have been talking to the Eastern European countries and the Soviet Union about emigration problems. The Germans have, for example, some talks going on with several countries in Eastern Europe about ex-German nationals emigrating.

All of these actions at least keep a focus of public attention on the problem and that is the way you bring about improvements, not by refusing to discuss problems but by gradually just making it more of a normal situation to have greater exchanges. These things are not brought up constantly as political confrontations, because when they are brought up as political confrontations it is our feeling that that just closes up the possibility of making progress.

Mr. FASCELL. What does constitute the termination of stage II and when do we expect that?

Mr. HARTMAN. Agreement on these texts. That could come about as early as mid-June. The Finns have told us it will take them about 6 weeks to get prepared for a meeting at stage III which would be the meeting

Mr. FASCELL. That would lead to the initial steps of stage III? Mr. HARTMAN. Well, stage III will be just a day or two of approving these documents and making speeches.

Mr. FASCELL. At the highest level?

Mr. HARTMAN. At the highest level if that is the final agreement. As I say, no Western country has yet absolutely said they will send their head of government. They have all conditioned their statements, but my expectation is that it will be.

Mr. FASCELL. When a satisfactory conclusion of stage II or consensus has been reached, then a decision will be reached as to how stage III will be set?

Mr. HARTMAN. Well, it is decided that the meeting will be in Helsinki and it is just a question of how long it will take to get organized,

Mr. FASCELL. But it has not yet been decided how high up the level will be?

Mr. HARTMAN. Not firmly, but the expectation is running toward heads of government.

Mr. FASCELL. What do the westerners and neutrals expect? Once the Soviet bloc claims a political victory and they do that for a reasonable length of time, then after that dies off, what next?

Mr. HARTMAN. Well, each side will present obviously what it thinks it got out of the Conference.

Mr. FASCELL. I am not talking about that.

Mr. HARTMAN. Even at the Conference people say things.

Mr. FASCELL. I am talking about the conclusion of stage III. We have a difference of opinion as to where we go next.

Mr. HARTMAN. Right. Well, there is a genuine difference of opinion as to whether or not it is to our advantage to have a permanent committee established which constantly reviews the operation of these resolutions. Some people would say from our point of view that maybe it is a good idea to have a permanent committee there; then you could be constantly bringing up these cases and say you are not living up to some of these things that you have already agreed to, for example, in the third basket.

The original position, was not to have a followup mechanism and institutionalize it. There was a feeling on our part and our allies that that could give the Soviet Union an opportunity to kibitz and make a lot of suggestions about the operation of our alliance, particularly if they have some means by these declarations to talk about security

matters and that somehow or other it would give them more of an opportunity to intervene in the public discussion process in the West.

Now some people may have changed their minds about that but we are still in the same position we were 2 years ago; namely, a reluctance on the part of the West to have an institutionalized mechanism and a proposal by the East to have one. I am not sure that is still the position on both sides.

Mr. FASCELL. You may be worse by the time you get through with stage III.

Mr. HARTMAN. That is right.

Mr. FASCELL. But it seems reasonable that you would at least want a measure of Soviet actions or Eastern bloc actions after the culmination of stage III to see how they handled it and to get some measure of where they are going in terms of propaganda and political effort. Mr. HARTMAN. That is right.

Mr. FASCELL. Mr. Derwinski.

Mr. DERWINSKI. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

It seems then that the area where there may be varying or conflicting interpretations will revolve around a number of items under basket 1 and basket 3.

Mr. HARTMAN. I think that is probably true, yes.

Mr. DERWINSKI. We keep discussing blocs, neutral country blocs, Western blocs, Eastern blocs. What has been the pattern of performance of Albania at this conference?

Mr. HARTMAN. Albania is the one European country that is not there.

Mr. DERWINSKI. They have not attended?

Mr. HARTMAN. That is the only one.

Mr. DERWINSKI. What about Yugoslavia, have they shown any deviation from the Eastern bloc?

Mr. HARTMAN. Absolutely. They have and they have made it quite clear throughout the Conference that they are acting independently, that they do not follow either bloc; if anything, that they have their own views and they are going to express them. They have been responsible in several cases for key proposals that have been made and indeed the final compromise proposals when that has been

necessary.

They have been quite clearly taking an independent position.
Mr. DERWINSKI. What about Romania?

Mr. HARTMAN. To a certain extent.

Mr. DERWINSKI. Much more limited than Yugoslavia?

STATEMENT OF HAROLD S. RUSSELL, OFFICE DIRECTOR, EUROPEAN AFFAIRS, LEGAL ADVISER'S OFFICE

Mr. RUSSELL. I would say so; more outspoken.

Mr. HARTMAN. Well, Hal has been there but I don't like to characterize it, frankly.

Mr. DERWINSKI. What about our allies, have any of them been unusually outspoken on any of these issues we have expressed concern about during this morning-for example, the question of the frontier and the “inviolability of frontiers" phrase?

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