Deng Says He Is Ready to Meet Gorbachev
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PEKING — Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping says he is ready to “go any place in the Soviet Union to meet with (Soviet leader Mikhail S.) Gorbachev” if Moscow withdraws its support for Vietnam’s intervention in Cambodia, according to remarks released Saturday.
Deng said China and the Soviet Union “are actually in a state of confrontation” in Cambodia, where Soviet-backed Vietnamese troops have been fighting for the past seven years against Cambodian resistance forces armed and financed by China.
“If the Soviet Union can contribute to the withdrawal of Vietnamese troops from Kampuchea (Cambodia), this will remove the main obstacle in Chinese-Soviet relations,” Deng said in an interview to be broadcast today on the CBS program “60 Minutes.”
Excerpts from the Tuesday interview were carried by the New China News Agency.
Gorbachev, in Vladivostok on July 28, called for an end to Sino-Soviet hostility, but China says the Soviet Union must first remove the “three obstacles”--Cambodia, Soviet intervention in Afghanistan, and Soviet troop deployment along the Soviet-Chinese border.
Deng said Cambodia is the most important of the three.
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