Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!uunet!aplcen!uakari.primate.wisc.edu!brutus.cs.uiuc.edu!psuvax1!psuvm!auvm!UMKCVAX1!CARBUCKLE From: CARBUCKLE@UMKCVAX1.BITNET (Valentine M. Smith) Newsgroups: bit.listserv.politics Subject: Ussr(#39) Message-ID: <90043.2125.CARBUCKLE@UMKCVAX1> Date: 12 Feb 90 21:25:00 GMT Sender: Forum for the Discussion of Politics Reply-To: Forum for the Discussion of Politics Lines: 48 Approved: NETNEWS@AUVM Gateway Within the hour, disturbances in Tajikistan(Tadzikhistan?)caused a state of emergency to be declared from the capital of this SSR deep in the center of Asian USSR, Dushambe. I think that the six "Asian" republics-Kazakh, Turkestan, Azerbaijan, Tadzhik(?), Uzbekistan, and a sixth I'll look up, are the true "great hotbeds" of future USSR dissent. They and Georgia haven't been heard from a lot, and Siberia and the Ukraine not all. But in all nine cases, there are significant restive minorities just itching for confrontation with the central government. Apparently, one of the more unknown ones(to Western eyes) has decided to react negatively to the Soviet state. Another interesting group of comments on the Germanies- Schevardnadze-"The process(to reunification) can be manageable." Baker-"...haven't gotten there yet." There appears to be some hope, by whom all I'm not sure, that the unification issue will be resolved by the June Gorbachev-Bush summit in the US. There appears to be more and more riding on this summit-German reunification and under what umbrella defensively, if at all, arms control and Open Skies agreement, and now announced this afternoon is the hope that a US/USSR trade agreement can be reached in time for signing at this summit. On the troop cuts, Bush stands by his 195,000(40,000)excluded formula, the Soviet President just offered his 235,000 on both sides through all of Europe over the weekend, more to come on this. East Germany today has requested $6-9 billion in aid from the West Germans, while opposition members in the East German parliment remain opposeed to a West/East German monetary union, spoken of over the weekend as "on the verge of happening" and "within a few days." Today there are predictions of monetary union, a single capital city and single Parliment within weeks. Hurd from the British Foreign Office was asked about this today, he replied that they had "had little time to consider that." Czechoslavakia, Poland and Hungary are beginning to press the Soviets for "immediate" troop withdrawals, my wife quipped when she heard that, "When are the western powers going to ask the US to take their troops out?" I think the latter will happen more slowly than the Soviet withdrawal. George Bush said today,(I paraphrase) "If the momentum of the bilateral relationship( between the US and Soviet Union) continues, the June summit will be a sucess." Lastly, Walesa on South Africa, though his remarks are really more wide ranging- "...no room for regimes that hold human rights in contempt." He could have as easily been talking about his own government, or the Soviets, or even to a lesser degree, the United States, though our disregard seems to revolve around CIA Operations Division than all of our political institutions. Congress tends to be ignorant, the administration obtuse about the not-so-moral things WE do in the world.