Chile, Puerto Rico: To Russia with Trade

CHILE

Chile has not had diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union since 1947, when Communist-led coal miners mounted a small-scale antigovernment insurrection.

Last week Chile's newly inaugurated President Eduardo Frei, 53, decided to forgive, if not forget. In a brief ceremony at Santiago's La Moneda palace, he accepted the credentials of Ambassador Nikolai Alekseev, thus making Chile the sixth Latin American nation to have diplomatic relations with Moscow.—The U.S. took it with a shrug. "Our ties with Chile are too tight and too deep to be adversely affected," said an embassy spokesman in Santiago. Behind the move is Frei's frankly expressed desire to find new trade markets for Chilean exports, particularly copper. And besides, he adds, "I prefer to have the Russians operating in the open as diplomats." Eventually, the Christian Democratic President plans to establish relations with such Communist-bloc countries as Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Poland. There is one specific exception, though. Cuba will continue to get the freeze from Frei.

PUERTO RICO

Thanks, but No Thanks

The concept of independence, which seems to burn so brightly in the world's developing countries, reaches the point of distortion in many ways. Last week the United Nations special committee on decolonization accepted by a 13-10 vote a report dealing with the recent Cairo Conference of Nonaligned Countries, which included the likes of Cuba.

Among the report's recommendations: a U.N. discussion of independence for Puerto Rico.

The committee vote ignored a 1953 General Assembly ruling that Puerto Rico is a self-governing commonwealth "in free association" with the U.S. and thus not a proper subject for U.N. territorial studies. Stormed Governor Luis Munoz Marin: "It is inconceivable that a responsible international body could place itself in the untenable position of advocating a political status for a people who have categorically rejected it in numerous elections." Munoz pointed out that Puerto Rico's minuscule Independence Party mustered less than 5% (22,000 out of 800,000) of the vote in the Nov. 3 elections—not even enough to remain on the ballot.