Symbolic Span

Signed in 1964 but promptly consigned to limbo by the Senate, the U.S.Soviet consular treaty last week finally won approval. After voting down six attempts to weaken or destroy it, the Senate ratified the treaty 66 to 28, three votes more than the required two-thirds majority.

As recently as two months ago, with FBI Boss J. Edgar Hoover and Senate Minority Leader Everett Dirksen both vociferously opposed to the pact, its chances seemed nonexistent. The turn ing point came on Jan. 31, when Kentucky's Republican Senator Thruston Morton rose to deliver a moving plea for passage of the treaty.

Morton castigated "extremist groups in our society who fear Polish hams as much as they fear any new gesture toward world peace." He prodded the White House to fight hard for the treaty's passage, told colleagues that they should not let the Viet Nam war stand in the way of East-West understanding, despite the fact that many were resentful because Russia supplies 70% of Hanoi's imported war materiel. His persuasiveness eventually won over a majority of the Senate's Republicans (who were 22 to 13 in favor of the treaty). Even Ev Dirksen finally confessed: "I'm not impervious to misconceptions." When the time came to vote, Dirksen left a hospital bed, where he was confined by fatigue, to cast his "aye" and hail the treaty as beneficial "to the people of the entire world."

Limited Scope. Though symbolically important in the President's program to build bridges of understanding to Eastern Europe, the treaty is actually no more than a footbridge. It merely lays the basis for the two countries to resume an exchange of consulates,*leaving the question of number and location to future negotiations. The Administration would like one consulate in Leningrad; Russia is believed to want one in Chicago. The treaty also provides immunity from arrest for all consulate officials and employees. Further, it requires the Soviet government to notify U.S. officials within three days of the arrest of any American (18,000 now visit Russia annually) and to permit a visit within four days.

Despite the treaty's limited scope, it clearly represents an improvement in U.S.-Soviet relations. The Russian Presidium is expected to rubber-stamp it shortly, thereby completing action on the first bilateral treaty ever entered into by the two countries. A pact to prohibit nuclear weapons in space may also be ratified shortly. But agreement on the thorniest issue--anti-ballistic missiles--is a remoter prospect, though talks on the subject are scheduled to begin in Moscow soon. In the meantime, Russia is thought to be going ahead with plans to deploy an ABM system. As for the U.S., the Senate Armed Services Committee last week recommended that a multibillion dollar American ABM system be set up unless Russia agrees to drop its plans.

*The last consulates were closed in 1948 when a Soviet consul general kidnaped Oksana Stepanovna Kasenkina after her escape from Russia's New York consulate, where she was a schoolteacher. She later escaped again by leaping from the consulate's third floor, became a U.S. citizen before her death in 1960.

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