The Senate Foreign Relations Committee, at the request of Sen. Clifford P. Case (R.N.J.) has asked Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger to provide “a full airing” of charges that “important parts” of the Soviet-American trade agreement were not transmitted to Congress in accordance with law.
Case is to tell the Senate tomorrow that the parts “have indeed entered into force and Congressional deliberation on granting credits to the USSR has been bypassed by an Executive agreement that extends credits at a preferred rate to the USSR.” A copy of Case’s prepared remarks was obtained today by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
The House in Dec., adopted by a 4-1 ratio the Mills-Vanik measure forbidding credits or most favored nation tariffs to the Soviet Union until it relaxes its emigration barriers. The identical measure, the Jackson Amendment, is backed by 78 Senators. Hearings on it are expected before the Senate Finance Committee as part of the overall Trade Reform Act late this month or early March.
No date has been fixed for Kissinger’s appearance before the Foreign Relations Committee regarding Case’s charges relevant to the U.S.-Soviet agreement signed Oct. 18, 1972 as a follow-up to the summit meeting in Moscow in May of that year.
SUBSIDIZED CREDIT HIDDEN FROM PUBLIC
Case is to say in his speech that “neither the Congress nor the taxpayer has been told the extent of the obligation to extend subsidized credit to the USSR.” An agreement, he said, between the U.S. Export-Import Bank and the Soviet Vnesthtorgbank provides in essence for long-term credits at six percent “on a case by case basis to the USSR” and that the conditions for the credits “will not be less favorable than those usually extended to other purchasers in similar transactions.”
The agreement, Case says, put a $500 million “ceiling” on the credits which, Case says, he is questioning. Thus far, Ex-Im Bank has lent the USSR $119 million of the $500 million committed to the Soviet Union. Pending final approval is $180 million more, mainly for the Occidental Petroleum Company’s fertilizer complex for the USSR and $49 million for gas exploration, Case will say.
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