ABROAD

PARIS Trouble in Battalions The withdrawal of Libyan troops, who confronted the French across a demarcation line in the central-African country of Chad for a considerable period but never officially opened fire, is still far from an acknowledged fact. But although the French have marched off in good faith to the neighboring country of Cameroon, there is some doubt that the Libyans intend to keep the pledge made in the agreement they signed with the French at Tripoli. Journalists have noted the movement of two Libyan columns comprising some one thousand men, thirty Soviet-built tanks, and batteries of SAM-9 missiles northward toward their homeland. Deep suspicion of Libyan intentions remains, however, and it has not been dispelled by the recent breakdown of the “peace” conference at Brazzaville in the Congo, nor by recent high-level insistence by French officials that all is well. There are other worries. President Hissen Habre, who controls the southern part of Chad from his capital at N’Djamena, faces further uprisings in settlements in the southeast; there have already been massacres on both the government and the rebel sides. On top of all this, a new outbreak of famine threatens not only the Sahara region of Chad but its savanna lands as well.

BONN Ostpolitik Somehow The recent visit of Rumanian President Nicolae Ceausescu has gone a step toward counterbalancing the blow to the Federal Republic’s Ostpolitik delivered by Moscow when it forced East German leader Erich Honecker and Bulgarian president Todor Zhivkov to cancel their carefully planned visits here. Ceausescu was as usual able to resist similar pressure and display his independence from Moscow, at least as far as his travel movements are concerned. But he did little to dissociate himself from the Soviet line with respect to NATO. There was one point, however, on which his German hosts were insistent—the right of several hundred thousand ethnic Germans to emigrate from Rumania westward.

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PARIS Trouble in Battalions The withdrawal of Libyan troops, who confronted the French across a demarcation line in the central-African country of Chad for a considerable period but never officially opened fire, is still far from an acknowledged fact. But although the French have marched off in good faith to the neighboring country of Cameroon, there is some doubt that the Libyans intend to keep the pledge made in the agreement they signed with the French at Tripoli. Journalists have noted the movement of two Libyan columns comprising some one thousand men, thirty Soviet-built tanks, and batteries of SAM-9 missiles northward toward their homeland. Deep suspicion of Libyan intentions remains, however, and it has not been dispelled by the recent breakdown of the “peace” conference at Brazzaville in the Congo, nor by recent high-level insistence by French officials that all is well. There are other worries. President Hissen Habre, who controls the southern part of Chad from his capital at N’Djamena, faces further uprisings in settlements in the southeast; there have already been massacres on both the government and the rebel sides. On top of all this, a new outbreak of famine threatens not only the Sahara region of Chad but its savanna lands as well.

BONN Ostpolitik Somehow The recent visit of Rumanian President Nicolae Ceausescu has gone a step toward counterbalancing the blow to the Federal Republic’s Ostpolitik delivered by Moscow when it forced East German leader Erich Honecker and Bulgarian president Todor Zhivkov to cancel their carefully planned visits here. Ceausescu was as usual able to resist similar pressure and display his independence from Moscow, at least as far as his travel movements are concerned. But he did little to dissociate himself from the Soviet line with respect to NATO. There was one point, however, on which his German hosts were insistent—the right of several hundred thousand ethnic Germans to emigrate from Rumania westward.