FINLAND: Seven Come Eight

When Britain set out to counter the six-nation European Common Market with a European free-trade area of its own—knitting together the Scandinavian countries, Portugal, Switzerland and Austria—Finland badly wanted to join to make this Outer Seven an Outer Eight. But President Urho Kekkonen, a longtime neutralist who stoutly insists that Finland's future must be based on Soviet-Finnish "friendship," said nothing doing. Russia, Kekkonen argued, would be displeased if Finland participated in a non-Communist trade bloc.

In July, when the Outer Seven put into effect its first mutual 20% tariff reduction, the effect on Finnish trade was instant and disastrous. In Britain, Finland's best market, Finnish lumber and paper exporters ran into big trouble from Swedish and Norwegian competition, had to drop prices by as much as $5.60 a ton. Kekkonen, never very popular, was soon in bad political trouble. Last week Nikita Khrushchev decided the time had come to drop in and give him a hand.

Inviting himself to a three-day 60th-birthday celebration for Kekkonen, Khrushchev at first showed no signs that he was really trying to be ingratiating. At a presidential luncheon, which the Finns hoped would be off the record, Khrushchev told the Finns that Russia definitely intended to make it her "business" what

Finnish political parties said and did about Finland's ties to Moscow—and then released the speech. Having thus made Finland out to be almost a Kremlin satrapy, Khrushchev next praised Kekkonen as a friend of Russia with such tactless lavishness that even Kekkonen squirmed.

Screwing up his pride at a return Soviet embassy luncheon. President Kekkonen toasted Soviet-Finnish friendship but said that domestically, Finland would never forsake democracy, "even if the whole of the rest of Europe went Communist." Callously ignoring the presence of Hertta Kuusinen, Finland's Communist battle-axe (whose father is a member of the Soviet Party Secretariat in Moscow), Khrushchev amicably agreed: "I am sure nobody wants Communism here."

Late one night Kekkonen carried Khrushchev off to his lakeside villa, where the two stripped and sweated companionably for an hour in Kekkonen's private sauna, then emerged to talk serious business until 5 a.m. Next day the two issued a joint communique promptly interpreted as granting Finland permission to become a qualified member of the Free Trade Area in order to "remain competitive in Western markets." What the communique seemed to give might still be taken away when actual negotiations begin in Moscow in November (for Khrushchev also insisted upon "maintaining and expanding" Finnish trade with Russia). Nevertheless, a Finnish official in Helsinki jubilantly cried, "We're in, we're in!" and Finland's representatives at a GATT conference in Ge neva asked other EFTA members to consider them as already members.