Euromart leaders to send Soviets $1 billion more aid

ROME Leaders of the 12 European Community countries, alarmed bythe growing political threat to President Mikhail S. Gorbachev,decided Friday to send $1 billion in fresh emergency aid to theSoviet Union to help alleviate consumer discontent with foodshortages.

The 12 European heads of government, who gathered here for atwo-day meeting to launch ambitious new efforts to accelerate thedrive toward political and economic union in this decade, also agreedto stand firm with the United States in warning Iraqi PresidentSaddam Hussein to withdraw from Kuwait by Jan. 15 or face a possibleWestern military assault to evict his forces from the occupiedsheikdom.

While heeding a plea contained in an open letter from PresidentBush to avoid linking Kuwait "with other issues," the Europeanleaders were nonetheless expected to issue a declaration when theirmeeting concludes today reaffirming their desire to move quicklytoward an international peace conference on the Middle East soonafter the Persian Gulf crisis is resolved.

The gulf crisis was discussed at length over dinner after the 12government leaders spent much of their first day assessing the direplight facing the Soviet Union and its former allies in EasternEurope. In offering a new infusion of emergency aid, the EuropeanCommunity leaders said they would attempt to minimize any additionaldebt load for the beleaguered Soviet economy by extending much of theassistance, especially food, as an outright gift.

Fearing that a tardy rescue effort could trigger economic chaosand a stampede of desperate immigrants toward their affluentcountries, the West European leaders also agreed to send nearly $2billion in assistance to East European states to help their fragileeconomies adjust to free markets and survive the coming winter.

Much of the new aid to Eastern Europe will be used to tightenWestern links with Hungary and Czechoslovakia by hastening theconvertibility of their currencies. In countries where moredesperate conditions prevail, such as Bulgaria and Romania, nearly$300 million in urgent food and oil supplies will be delivered soon.

German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, whose country has agreed tofunnel more than $6 billion in bilateral aid to the Soviet Union,appealed to his European peers to expedite all assistance, especiallyfood and medicine, to thwart a potential political challenge thatcould topple Gorbachev and terminate his reforms.

Kohl's plea was backed by French President Francois Mitterrand,who was quoted by his spokesman as saying, "We can't wait any longeror we may regret any failure to move more quickly" to help the Sovietleader surmount his domestic critics.

The new British prime minister , John Major , making hisdiplomatic debut on the European leadership stage, concurred with theneed to speed up aid to the Soviets but expressed some caution aboutthe risk of squandering supplies and overburdening the dilapidatedSoviet transport network.