Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, March 7, 1990                   TAG: 9003071299
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A8   EDITION: STATE 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                 LENGTH: Medium

GEPHARDT PROPOSES DIRECT U.S. AID TO SOVIET UNION

"We should be investing in our own self-interest," Gephardt said. "And stability, democracy and a market economy in the Soviet Union are in America's strong self-interest."

The proposal brought immediate criticism from some quarters, and a presidential spokesman said the Soviets don't want direct aid.

Sen. Bill Bradley, D-N.J., also said that the Soviets haven't requested U.S. help and that, if they did, it would be wasted without economic reform. "Unless they reform the economy, it's going down a rathole," Bradley said.

Others on Capitol Hill said that while they thought Gephardt's proposal would spark a useful debate, the idea would fall on disapproving public ears.

"If you're going to start giving foreign aid to the hated commies of 70 years' worth, you've got a real sales job to do in the United States," said Sen. Alan Simpson, R-Wyo.

"Gorbachev needs us a lot more than we need him," said Senate Minority Leader Bob Dole, R-Kan. "We ought to extract a fair price" for any support, including a requirement that the Soviets stop aiding client states from Cuba to Afghanistan.

"If Gorbachev needs some ready cash, he can ask for a refund from Castro" and the others, Dole said in a speech released by his office.

Gephardt noted an appeal by Czechoslovak President Vaclav Havel, in a Feb. 21 speech to Congress, to help his country by helping the Soviet Union continue on its reformist road.

If Havel, who was imprisoned by the Communists, can call for aid to the Soviets, "the least we can do is listen," Gephardt said in a speech that also contained his harshest criticism to date of Bush's policy toward Eastern Europe.

He accused Bush of "a lack of leadership in this most crucial moment," throwing billions of dollars into the military budget to defend against "Communists who don't want to be Communists any more" while ignoring their economic needs.

"It's as though George Bush's Pentagon budget were written by someone who hadn't read a newspaper in a year," Gephardt said, drawing applause. Indeed, most of the administration's budget was drafted last year, after the opening of the Berlin Wall but before many other dramatic developments in Eastern Europe.

At the White House, spokesman Marlin Fitzwater called the charges "general old political stuff" and added, "The Soviet Union doesn't want direct aid."

But others, while saying the Soviet Union should have to meet certain conditions before receiving U.S. help, acknowledged that events have moved so rapidly that aid is no longer out of the question.

Gephardt, a 1988 candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, proposed the idea of direct aid in a speech to the liberal Center for National Policy and acknowledged that it would be difficult politically.