The three hutlike wooden crates on Le Havre's Quai de Moselle last week looked unremarkable. But when they were finally winched aboard the French freighter Borodine for a five-day trip to the Soviet port of Riga, they caused an immediate intensification of the long-running dispute between the U.S. and its Western European allies over Washington's sanctions against the Soviet natural gas pipeline. The shipment amounted to an open French challenge of the U.S. embargo: each of the crates contained a French-made and U.S.-designed compressor that will help propel Siberian gas through the 3,000-mile...
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