WEST GERMANY- Helmut Schmidt in Moscow


WEST GERMANY Helmut Schmidt in Moscow Ramesh Jaura THE West German Chancellor's recent two-day visit to Moscow was not only the most delicate mission in his career, hut also an exceptional act of realpolitik by the government of a country which is bound to the Western alliance and can ill afford to float between East and West, Schmidt's talks on June 30-July 1 with Brezhnev, .Kosygin and his sur- prise meeting with Soviet defence minister Ustinov did not produce any spectacular results. Yet, these were not in vain. At the conclusion of the talks, the Soviet Union let it be known that it was prepared to negotiate with the US on limitation of intermediate range nuclear missiles in Europe, even before the SALT II treaty has been ratified and without NATO dropping its decision last December to modernise its weapons systems. The beginning of preliminary talks on reduction of nuclear arsenal in Europe