Try for Respectability

Even more than most Soviet satellites, the regime of Hungarian Puppet Janos Kadar is regarded by the U.S. with revulsion. Ever since Kadar was installed by Soviet bayonets that snuffed out the 1956 revolution, the U.S. conducts almost no trade relations with Hungary, maintains a skeleton legation and only a charge d'affaires in Budapest. In addition, on the motion of the U.S., the U.N. General Assembly every year schedules the Hungarian question for debate, receives a report from the U.N.'s special representative, New Zealand's Sir Leslie Munro, on the continuing suppression of human rights and freedom by Soviet occupation forces in Hungary.* Both rebukes are sorely resented by the Hungarian Reds, and last week they began a two-pronged maneuver aimed at winning a small measure of international respectability.

Invited to Budapest was Acting U.N. Secretary-General U Thant, who apparently accepted despite the fact that Hungary still stands officially condemned by the U.N. (Thant's predecessor, Dag Hammarskjold, had refused a similar invitation in 1957.) At the same time, a group of 29 Western newsmen who had toured Hungary for five days were greeted effusively by Deputy Premier Gyula Kallai, who hinted, over apricot brandy and pastry, that the Hungarian government might permit Josef Cardinal Mindszenty to leave his sanctuary in the U.S. legation, where he took refuge in November 1956, if the U.S. is prepared to consider "betterment of relations between the two governments."

From Washington, State Department reaction to the deal was swift and damning: to propose trading Cardinal Mindszenty for U.S. reconciliation with the Kadar regime or for dropping the Hungarian question from the U.N. agenda is simply a form of blackmail.

*Sir Leslie's latest report, coincidentally issued last week, said that "despite adversity and repression, Hungarian national feeling remains alive, to the evident discomfiture of the regime."

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