EC Approves $1-Billion Soviet Food Aid Plan

ROME —  European Community leaders agreed today on a $1-billion food aid package for the Soviet Union and said it is worth the price if it helps keep President Mikhail S. Gorbachev in power.

The leaders approved the emergency aid package, with the proportion of grants and loans still to be decided, at the opening of a two-day summit that is scheduled to launch the 12-nation bloc on a radical path toward European unity.

“It is not in the interests of Europe or Britain that the Soviet Union should fall into anarchy or should lapse into the hands of some backward-looking tyrant,” British Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd said.

For the longer term, they agreed in principle on a two-year, $1.4-billion package of technical assistance for 1991-92 to help the Soviet Union in the fields of energy, transportation, distribution and telecommunications, summit spokesman Pio Mastrobuoni said.

Aid for the hard-pressed economies of Eastern Europe was also under discussion.

The European leaders stressed during their private talks that the Soviet Union does not face famine but is hampered by an inadequate distribution system and black market profiteers.

“It is no good having food rotting in a siding in Leningrad rather than rotting in a grain store here,” said British Prime Minister John Major, making his EC debut since replacing Margaret Thatcher.

At the same time, Gorbachev needs breathing room to carry out his economic reform program. But his political hold is under constant challenge from various segments of Soviet society.