HUNGARY: The Cardinal's Dilemma

Ever since his short-lived freedom from Communist jailers during last autumn's Hungarian revolution, Josef Cardinal Mindszenty has been living in the U.S. Legation in Budapest. Mindszenty, forced by Russian intervention to seek refuge, lives in a two-room apartment, gets his meals from the legation kitchen, works on his memoirs and takes infrequent strolls in a gloomy little patio in the legation compound. Though the legation keeps him supplied with newspapers (including the Paris Herald Tribune), the protocol of diplomatic refuge forbids him to receive or send letters or to use the telephone.

Last week the Italian Communist Party organ Unita printed a dispatch from its Budapest correspondent suggesting that if the U.S. would request it, Hungary's puppet Premier Janos Kadar would be happy to grant Mindszenty a safe-conduct allowing him to leave both the legation and Hungary. To these officially inspired Communist overtures, there was a noticeable absence of response by both the Vatican and his U.S. hosts.

U.S. officials say privately that Kadar wants Mindszenty to leave so that he can be depicted to his people as a runaway. Kadar is also thought to believe that, with Mindszenty out of the way, the U.S. might be more inclined to send back a minister to replace Edward T. Wailes, who left Hungary two months ago on State Department orders without ever having presented his credentials.

Officially, the U.S., which does not recognize the right of diplomatic missions to offer international sanctuary in the manner practiced so widely in Latin America,* has been fearful that the Communists might try to seize the cardinal by force. Last week's feeler was welcomed in Washington as tacit recognition by the Kadar government that U.S. protection has been effectively extended to the cardinal. Unless he gets official instructions from the Vatican to ask for a safe-conduct—which seems unlikely—Cardinal Mindszenty will probably stay on in his present haven indefinitely.

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In New York last week, Anna Kethly, a Minister of State in the eight-day government of Premier Imre Nagy, reported that Nagy, now in a Rumanian prison, will probably be brought back to Budapest shortly for trial. Two other ministers in Nagy's Cabinet have already been brought back and lodged in Fo Utca Prison, Miss Kethly said, and their trial presumably will provide the backdrop for Nagy's. Said Anna Kethly: "The Prime Minister is under great pressure to confess. A special investigation group was set up by the MVD and the AVH for this reason. Not only secret policemen are members of this special group; it includes psychiatrists, heart and nerve specialists. They believe that under the pressures of their daily tortures the Premier will confess. I am absolutely sure he will confess."