Restricted Diplomats

Last week the Federal government placed new restrictions on the movements of Eastern European diplomats within the United States. Representatives of Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland and Rumania may no longer travel in over 500 counties, amounting to about 11 per cent of the country.

The State Department spokesman who announced the new policy found himself unable to offer any justification for it--indeed, his department opposed such a change from the first. But the Defense Department put enough pressure on the White House to push through the restrictions over State Department objections.

The new limitations on travel reverse a previous policy. There are no convincing reasons for the change, and several good reasons why it should be rescinded.

The Pentagon is reportedly concerned that envoys from the five countries might use their diplomatic immunity to spy on military installations. How they could do so is unclear, since all such installations are protected by efficient security systems. In any case, journalists and private citizens, who can presumably work for Communist intelligence agencies too, do not come under the ban.

At the root of the new policy is an outmoded concept of the Soviet bloc as a monolithic political entity, a concept the State Department abandoned years ago. By imposing travel restrictions on these five countries, the U.S. implies that they are all alike and must be treated as we treat the Soviet Union. In the process, American diplomacy loses a valuable tool which might have been used to help dislodge the Eastern European countries from each other and from the Russians.

Also, this sudden reversal in policy undercuts the American contention that restrictions on the travel of Communist diplomats are purely retaliatory. In recent years the Eastern Europeans have opened large parts of their countries to American diplomats; our unprovoked action upsets our otherwise improving relations with Eastern Europe and needlessly robs U.S. foreign policy of flexibility in bargaining with the Soviet bloc.