The United States declared a truce today in its diplomatic expulsion war with the Soviet Union. State Department spokesman Charles Redman said, "We hope this set of issues can now be put behind us." Redman did say that any restrictions placed on temporary American workers in Moscow would be matched by limits on Soviet workers here. He condemned the latest Soviet expulsion order, but said it's time the two governments moved on to arms control and other issues taken up by President Reagan and Soviet leader Gorbachev at their meetings in Iceland two weeks ago.
President Reagan left the White House today for a two-day campaign trip. The President hopes to boost Republican Senate candidates and his first stop was in Wisconsin, where he appeared on behalf of freshman Senator Robert Castan. Mark Levine of member station WUWM reports from Milwaukee. "President Reagan came here to endorse Senator Castan who's in a close re-election race against Democrat Edward Garvey, the former chief of the National Football League Players' Union. In his speech at a GOP rally, Mr. Reagan said his name will never be on the ballot again. 'So if you want to vote for me, vote for Bob Castan, so that we can have a Republican Senate that will work with me instead of against me and be around after I'm gone. But I'm not, I'm not just asking that for me. Do it for yourself. Do it for Wisconsin. Do it for America.' Recent polls showed Senator Castan narrowly leading Garvey. Republicans here believe the President's appearance will help Castan win re-election on November 4th. For National Public Radio, this is Mark Levine in Milwaukee."
The lawyer representing Eugene Hasenfus prepared today to enter a plea to charges that could send the captured flier to prison for thirty years. Hasenfus is accused of committing a terrorist act and violating Nicaraguan security by taking part in a contra supply mission. Former US Attorney-Griffen Bell is expected to arrive today in Managua to aid in Hasenfus defense. Hasenfus met for two hours today with his Nicaraguan attorney.
For the past few weeks, the United States and the Soviet Union have been expelling each other's diplomats almost on a daily basis. Today, the US called a truce. NPR's Jim Angle reports.
The United States called a halt today to week-long retaliatory exchange with the Soviet Union, leaving both sides searching for ways to deal with new restrictions on their respective diplomatic mission. The tit-for-tat retaliations ended abruptly as the State Department announced that it would match some minor restrictions by the Soviets on the number of visas given for temporary personnel. But the administration did not expel any more Soviet diplomats, even though the Soviets in their last retaliation yesterday ordered the expulsion of five more Americans. State Department spokesman Charles Redman made clear that as far as the US is concerned, the matter is over.
"This is our response. We hope that this set of issues can now be put behind us."
Redman emphasized the most positive aspects of the retaliations and then sought to shift the focus of US-Soviet relations to more productive matters.
"There seems to be common ground in the mutual acknowledgement of parity and reciprocity as the foundation of our diplomatic relationship. We need now to get on with resolution of the larger issues affecting US-Soviet relations and build on the progress made in the discussions at Reykjavik."
The common ground on reciprocity went a good bit further than the US hoped. The administration, responding to an expulsion of five Americans last Sunday, ordered out an equal number of Soviet diplomats on Tuesday. And at the same time, the US said that it was permanently reducing the size of the staff at the Soviet Embassy and Consulate in the US to equal the number of Americans now stationed in the Soviet Union. And the administration expelled fifty Soviet diplomats to get the Soviet Union down to that level immediately. American officials said all fifty-five Soviets expelled this week were spies, the same allegation the US made against the twenty-five Soviets it expelled from their UN mission in September. The Soviets retaliated yesterday in a way that left the US no corresponding action to take. They withdrew all the Soviet citizens working for the US Embassy in Moscow and the Consulate in Leningrad, a total, the Soviets said, of two hundred sixty. Those people are the maids, cooks, drivers, mechanics and translators for the Embassy staff in the Soviet Union. The Soviets, by contrast, rely almost exclusively on Soviet citizens assigned to the US for the same kind of work. State Department spokesman Redman acknowledged the Soviet action will make things more difficult for our diplomats in the Soviet Union.
"We expect that there will have to be some fairly substantial changes in our staffing patterns, as we need personnel to take up the tasks previously performed by others. And there will undoubtedly be some short-term adjustment problems. And over the long term we will have a different look in Moscow."
The administration wanted to force a different look on the Soviet presence in the United States as well. Officials yesterday said the US expulsions had decapitated Soviet intelligence in the United States. Said one official, "It was a crushing blow that eliminated the top leadership of Soviet intelligence here and means the end of an era for Soviet intelligence in the United States," Officials said reduction in Soviet diplomatic staff would also reduce the overall Soviet intelligence presence in the United States. And they said it would create dissension between the Soviet diplomatic ranks and the intelligence services as they compete for a shrinking number of positions in the US. But the Soviets showed yesterday they could force some equally difficult choices on the Americans. The administration must now decide, for instance, whether it must displace some diplomats or intelligence officers in order to make room for maids and mechanics, jobs that were previously held by Soviets. Now they must be done by Americans who count toward the overall total of official Americans permitted to serve in the USSR. Charles Redman conceded that will have some impact on the US ability to keep track of things there.
"Without question, there's going to be some change in our ability to monitor what happens in the Soviet Union. This is something that we foresaw as we went into this. As a consequence, we're prepared to cope with it."
Other officials said yesterday the US Embassy in Moscow is now larger than it has ever been. "Historically," said one official, "the US staff in the Soviet Union has been somewhere between one hundred seventy-five and two hundred, but for a number of reasons," the official said, "it had grown recently to two hundred fifty-one." Sources denied that it was in anticipation of this week's events, but suggested it will make the adjustment a little easier. So as the dust settles, the Soviets are left with a substantially smaller presence in the United States, which administration officials say will make it a little easier to clamp down on Soviet intelligence activities. But the administration, which has placed great value on being firm, if not tough, with the Soviets, found this week that is a two-way street. US officials concerned with monitoring and combating Soviet intelligence activities think the trade-off of more difficult conditions for American diplomats in exchange for a more hostile environment for Soviet intelligence here is worth it. But it remains to be seen if the Soviet retaliation will have an equal impact on the United States. I'm Jim Angle in Washington.
Who am I really? What is reality for that matter? In fact, what is matter, or time, or cause and effect? These are old questions asked and answered again and again by philosophers and scientists. They were still asking them over the weekend at a Nature of Reality Conference at Colorado State University. They talked about quantum theory, relativity and the new physics, discoveries in atomic science that cast new light on old questions or maybe just add to the list. One speaker was Fritchoff Kapra. A few year ago he wrote The Tao of Physics , a book which linked the findings of modern science with ancient eastern philosophies. It set off a wave of interest in how our most common notions about reality break down in the world of the very small.
"Let's talk about an electron which is sort of, you know, the smallest entity we know. And we have the tendency of picturing it somewhat like a grain of sand. Well, this is very wrong. It's not an isolated entity. It's not a grain of sand. It cannot be said to exist even in a certain place at a definite time. It's a sort of, you know, very nebulous entity seemingly which requires a whole new set of concepts and ideas to be described. What emerged in the last fifteen years is that the new world view that came out of modern physics is in fact not limited to physics, but is emerging now also in the other sciences, in biology, in psychology, in the social sciences. And it is best, it is best described by calling it a systems view."
"Could you give us an example?"
"Let's talk about medicine, for instance. Conventional Western medicine is based on Descartes' view of the human body as a machine, in fact, as a clock-work. And when a clock doesn't function, you look for the single part that has broken down and you, by an act of intervention, you replace that part. This is what doctors do now, in terms of physical intervention through surgery or chemical intervention through drugs. The new kind of view would be seeing the human organism as an integrated whole which has physical aspects, biological aspects, but also psychological aspects and which is imbedded in a natural environment and in a social and emotional environment."
"Now going back to physics for one minute, what do we see on the atomic level that gets us to that same place?"
"Nothing. Physics cannot be used as the basis for the new world view. You cannot understand a living organism in terms of physics alone. Of course, it does satisfy the laws of physics, because it is also, you know, made of physical constituents like molecules and atoms. But in order to understand life, and therefore in order to understand health, you have to have a broader framework."
"Could you give just a couple of examples?"
"The shift from the part to the whole was maybe the central development in quantum theory when physicists recognized that subatomic particles cannot be seen as isolated entities, but rather have to be seen as interconnections in a web of relationships. The other one, a very dramatic development, was Einstein's discovery that mass is nothing but a form of energy. Mass does not measure a certain material substance but measures activity or process, and therefore a very dramatic shift from thinking in terms of substance and structure to thinking in terms of process."
"It seems to me that there are hundreds, thousand, tens of thousands of people on college campuses, going to conferences who are utterly fascinated by implications of some connection between the way we view the cosmos, between philosophy, between religion and physics. But most of these people and most of their ideas in the mainstream society are considered somewhat on the fringe. Why is that?"
"Einstein was very much considered on the fringe. Beethoven was considered on the fringe. Mozart was considered on the fringe. This always happens with new creative ideas, and the world view that emerged from modern physics is really something radically new and is something very disturbing."
"What is the thought that is most uncomfortable?"
"Even more disturbing to physicists than to people outside of science is the fact that there are no well defined isolated objects, that we are all imbedded in a network of relationships where what you call an object depends very much how you look at it. Furthermore, that this network is not static, but is in continual process. So it is the relativity and the impermanence of existence. Now this is very disturbing, because it leads you to recognize the impermanence of your own existence, the illusion that we are a well defined, you know, isolated self that we have a well defined, isolated ego. And this is very disturbing to many people. It is not disturbing to people typically in spiritual traditions. To Buddhists, for instance, this is the very foundation of Buddhist thinking and Buddhist living. But to most Westerners, it is extremely disturbing."
Physicist Firtchoff Kapra heads the Elmwood Institute in Berkeley, California. |