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

DATE: MONDAY, March 26, 1990                   TAG: 9003262042
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: A3   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: CODY LOWE RELIGION WRITER
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

`75 EVENT CALLED CATALYST FOR E. EUROPE

The Rev. Dr. Helmut Nausner discussed political changes and church work in Europe before delivering the sermon at Windsor Hills United Methodist Church.

The groundwork for the political upheaval now being witnessed in Eastern Europe began in 1975 with the convening of the Conference for Security and Cooperation in Europe, Nausner said.

The conference, which has met several times since then - most recently from November of 1986 to January of 1989 - included representatives of the United States and Canada as well as European nations, he said.

The first conference resulted in the Helsinki Accords - a declaration of 10 principles in three main areas - human rights, arms reduction, and economics, culture and trade.

They included specific calls for such doctrines as respecting the sovereignty of all states and their current borders, refraining from the use of violence against another state, and guarantees of freedom of expression.

Nausner said that agreement led to the 1977 uprising in Czechoslovakia when citizens of that country began to demand the rights promised by the informal accord.

The conferences' discussions were aimed at the heart of what had perpetuated the Cold War, Nausner said in an interview after the sermon, because they reduced anxieties about national security and led to a new spirit of trust between official representatives of Eastern and Western countries.

Soviet President Mikail Gorbachev could not have accomplished all he has if the level of fear over national security had not been reduced in his country, Nausner said, and neither would Poland and other Soviet satellites have been allowed to reclaim their freedom.

Although the declarations would seem to have been aimed primarily at repressive communist governments, even the United States has not been immune from criticism for allegedly violating some of the principles in its invasion of Panama - including vows to use non-violent methods to settle disputes and to respect the sovereignty of other states.

An ecumenical group representing 30 church traditions is monitoring the implementation of the Helsinki principles, Nausner said, and has recently written President Bush protesting the United State's actions in Panama.

Despite such incidents, Nausner said real change has come in recent months. Borders with Eastern European countries are now open, free elections have been held or promised, and there is a new spirit of freedom.

All changes cannot come overnight, though, Nausner said, and there is much work still to be done in the newly liberated countries. Whole economic systems cannot be replaced in weeks or months, but only in years, he said. It will take time for huge, largely communist-staffed bureaucracies to be reoriented. Laws are being gradually replaced, not rewritten wholesale.

And people throughout these countries must be educated to the western market economies they are preparing to enter. Many workers will have to become more productive, he said, and everyone will have to get used to a Wild West system in which people get ahead on their own initiative.

Ironically, too, new freedom has brought new problems of repression in some countries, Nausner said. Religious minorities, including Jews and Protestant Christians, find themselves the objects of intolerance in some countries. And old nationalist tendencies suppressed by 40 years of Communist dictatorship are rising again.

Nausner blames some of ills on what he described as a kind of stunted national growth brought on by the oppressive governments.

The Methodist leader preached against "all forms of nationalism" and urged the Windsor Hills parishioners to think globally in political and religious terms.

Nausner serves on several international boards of the United Methodist Church. He is the son of Austrian Methodist missionaries to a section of the Soviet Union that used to be part of Poland.