1983: A LOOK BACK: Marathon Madrid Conference (12/25/83)

1983: A LOOK BACK

Marathon Madrid Conference

After nearly three, often frustrating years of deliberations, the Madrid Conference to review implementation of the 1975 Helsinki Accords came to a close on September 9. Burdened throughout by a sharp deterioration of East-West relations - the result of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the imposition of martial law in Poland and continued Soviet human-rights abuses - the meeting did serve to focus international attention on Soviet violations of the accords.

Even the formal closing week of the marathon meeting was marred by yet another Soviet atrocity - the shooting down of a Korean commercial jetliner with the loss of 269 lives.

The road to a concluding document was a difficult one. When the meeting resumed on February 8 following a Christmas recess, there was little hope that either side was willing to alter positions that would break the long-standing deadlock.

The NATO countries, led by the United States, introduced a number of amendments to the draft concluding document which took into account the Polish situation, the continued occupation of Afghanistan and the Warsaw Pact countries' dismal human-rights record. The Eastern bloc rejected most of the amendments, while offering minimal concessions on the others.

In March, the neutral and non-aligned countries proposed a compromise draft which omitted important Western demands, particularly in the area of human rights. The Soviets accepted the proposal on May 6, but U.S. Ambassador Max Kampelman, speaking for the NATO alliance, said the Western delegations would hold out for a "solid and meaningful" final document.

Finally, on June 17 Spain proposed a compromise which cut most remaining issues down the middle but which met the key U.S. demand for an experts meeting on "human contacts." The Soviets accepted the compromise on July 1.

On July 15, the Reagan administration announced that it had accepted the Spanish compromise. Mr. Reagan called it the "best agreement attainable" because it advanced "efforts of the West to hold out a beacon of hope for those in East who seek a more free, just and secure life."

Although the final document left out many of the Western amendments, such as those dealing with the right to strike, the banning of radio jamming and the freedom of journalists to move about, it did support workers' rights to join free trade unions as well as the rights of religious and ethnic minorities.

The formal close of the meeting did not take place until September because Malta stubbornly insisted on a special meeting on Mediterranean security.

The final three days of the meeting, September 7-9, were devoted to closing speeches delivered in all but a few cases by the foreign ministers of the 35 signatory states. Because of the Korean airliner incident, the long-awaited meeting between Secretary of State George Shultz and Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko dealt mainly with U.S. objections to Soviet behavior.

The concluding document itself has been criticized by human-rights groups as too vague and general. The External Representation of the Ukrainian Helsinki Group said that the final document "does not guarantee the protection of the Helsinki monitors," private citizens who formed unofficial groups in several Soviet republics to monitor Soviet compliance with the original accords. Most of the members are either imprisoned or in exile.

The document did make provisions for six specialized or "experts" meetings on a variety of subjects, including sessions on human rights (Ottawa, 1985), human contact (Bern, 1986) and disarmament (Stockholm, 1984). These meetings, hopefully, will provide a framework for future consideration of a range of East-West issues.

On the whole, the results of the Madrid meeting were mixed. The concluding document did commit signatory states to follow-up meetings on such issues as human rights. At the same time, it failed to produce any credible sign that the Soviet Union intends to regard its new commitments as an obligation to cease or diminish the pattern of internal repression and brutality which characterized Soviet behavior throughout the entire meeting.

But, for the moment, the so-called Helsinki process, though somewhat frayed, remains intact. If anything, it allows the West to continue to focus the international spotlight on egregious Soviet violations of human rights. Although that spotlight has yet to force the Soviets to appreciably alter their behavior, its glare has served to illuminate Soviet reality and counterbalance the Soviet Union's propagandistic claim that it belongs among the civilized countries of the world.

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