BRITAIN
The "Unpleasant" ConnectionTo Queen Elizabeth II, so it is reported, she is known as "our Val," after the Valkyries of German legend; other members of the British royal family are said to refer to her as "Princess Pushy." And in the British press last week the 6-ft.-tall Princess Michael of Kent, wife of the Queen's first cousin, was at the center of controversy because of the discovery by the tabloid Daily Mirror that the princess's late father, Baron Günther von Reibnitz, was both a Nazi and a major in Hitler's notorious SS. The princess, who was born in what is now Czechoslovakia and who was brought up by her mother in Australia, insisted last week that she had known almost nothing about her father's Nazi past until the details were confirmed by her mother following the Daily Mirror story. Said Princess Michael: "Here I am, 40 years old, and I discover something that is really quite unpleasant."
Publicity has followed the princess since she married Prince Michael nearly seven years ago, partly because she has been divorced, partly because she is a Roman Catholic and greatly because of her self-assertiveness. When asked at a press conference about the Nazi connection, Prince Philip, the Queen's husband, replied, "You must be kidding. I'm not going to talk about that."
EAST-WEST
A Promise Not to ShootBack in Washington, Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger was insisting that talks could not be held without compensation and a formal apology from Moscow. But at the Soviet officers' club in Potsdam, and later at the U.S. military liaison mission house, U.S. and Soviet generals were quietly trying to sort out their differences over last month's slaying of Major Arthur D. Nicholson Jr. by a Soviet soldier. The officer was on duty in East Germany as part of the agreement between Washington and Moscow that each side can maintain military observers in the two Germanys. Out of the four-hour meeting, arranged by the State Department, came no apology and no promise of compensation by the Soviets, only that these issues would be referred to a "higher authority" in Moscow. But the Soviets did offer one important concession: a ban on the "use of force or weapons" against American liaison mission patrols or personnel.
The State Department was eager to settle the matter before it ballooned into a major East-West dispute. Hoping to keep the issue as low-key as possible, the State Department waited four days to make public the Soviets' promise. The department now believes that Moscow cannot be pushed any further on the shooting.
UNESCO
Resignation and WarningIt was a difficult week for UNESCO. First, Gérard Bolla, one of the United Nations agency's two deputy directors general, resigned. Officials maintained that Bolla, a Swiss civil servant, was leaving because his nine-month temporary contract had run out. But others in the organization said that Bolla was dissatisfied both by UNESCO's refusal to extend his contract by more than two months and by proposed reforms.