Eroding Barriers

In the natural order of economic geography, Communist Rumania and Bulgaria and NATO's Greece and Turkey ought to have much in common. The Iron Curtain, however, was arranged to suit Moscow's liking. Rumania and Bulgaria were assigned the role of "market gardens" within the Red bloc to feed and fuel the industrialized satellites of the Communist northern tier --East Germany, Czechoslovakia and Poland. It was a role that the southern ers resented, and now that a measure of independence suffuses Eastern Europe, they are reaching out to fill the Balkans' natural pattern.

Pursuing fresh Balkan ties, Rumanian Party Boss Nicolae Ceausescu made a point of taking his vacation in Bulgaria in July, bringing to six the number of top-level visits between the two nations this year. Long-independent Red Yugoslavia, not to be left out, has sent Premier Peter Stambolic on a working holiday to Bulgaria, and has docketed him for Greece in October. The Bulgarian Foreign Minister meanwhile has gone to Turkey, which Rumanian Premier Ion Gheorghe Maurer visited last month. And last week, in the first visit to the Aegean kingdom ever made by a Communist Premier, Maurer flew to Greece.

In three days of toasts, banquets and amicable discussions, Maurer echoed Ceausescu's theme of cooperation in the Balkans by means of bilateral relations. The Rumanians made a fair start in Greece: at visit's end, the two nations initiated a communique covering not only trade and economic cooperation but also such esoteric items as telecommunications and plant-disease control.

But even more than spurring trade, Rumania was out to further establish its independence of Moscow and the new frontiers opening up in Europe. As Bucharest Foreign Minister Corneliu Manescu told the Greeks last week: "We are not influenced by the fact that Greece belongs to NATO and we to the Warsaw Pact. We are making efforts to reach an understanding with other nations, regardless of our position in the Warsaw Pact."

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