Antinuke protests begin, and the propaganda war intensifies
The first major confrontation promised to be unpleasant. White-helmeted riot police in armored cars faced more than 2,500 antimissile demonstrators outside a U.S. Army barracks near the North Sea port of Bremerhaven, West Germany. As the protesters attempted to blockade the American installation, police laid down oversize coils of barbed wire and erected barricades on access roads, sealing off a perimeter a mile from the base. At one point, a military vehicle was accosted by demonstrators who scrawled PIGS and NO WAR on its side. Some 250 activists were dragged away, and water cannons were turned on hundreds more. There were few injuries, however, and the formal beginning of Western Europe's "hot autumn" of antimissile protests was relatively peaceful. Not many Europeans were convinced that the antimissile campaign would stay that way.
Indeed, mounting anxieties over NATO'S plans to deploy Pershing II and cruise missiles in Western Europe beginning in December took on a heightened urgency last week, especially in the nation scheduled to receive the bulk of the new firepower, West Germany. While organizers were putting the final touches on plans for coordinated demonstrations across Western Europe this week, Moscow was doing its best to turn up the diplomatic pressure on the government of Chancellor Helmut Kohl. Soviet spokesmen forcefully renewed threats to pull out of the Geneva arms talks and to begin an aggressive new round in the nuclear arms race if the NATO missiles are installed.
Last weekend Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko flew to Vienna to meet with his West German counterpart, Hans-Dietrich Genscher. There were reports that Gromyko asked Genscher to help arrange a summit between the superpowers to help avert a crisis over the missile deployment. The latest Soviet moves appeared to signal an increased willingness in Moscow to push its war of nerves with Washington over the missiles to the crisis point. Said a West European diplomat: "The Soviets are trying to scare the hell out of everyone."
The week's first saber rattle came in Hamburg, where Kremlin Spokesman Leonid Zamyatin issued the strongest warning yet that Moscow was prepared to pull out of both the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) negotiations and Strategic Arms Reduction Talks (START) in Geneva if the missiles are deployed. 'We do not want to take part in negotiations leading to a situation in which powerful new missiles and warheads will be stationed in Europe," declared Zamyatin, a close adviser to Soviet President Yuri Andropov and a member of the policy-setting Central Committee. Zamyatin was asked if he meant that deployment would end the Geneva negotiations. He replied, "You have understood me correctly."