World Notes

BRITAIN The "Unpleasant" Connection

To Queen Elizabeth II, so it is reported, she is known as "our Val," after the Valkyries of German legend; other members of the British royal family are said to refer to her as "Princess Pushy." And in the British press last week the 6-ft.-tall Princess Michael of Kent, wife of the Queen's first cousin, was at the center of controversy because of the discovery by the tabloid Daily Mirror that the princess's late father, Baron Guenther von Reibnitz, was both a Nazi and a major in Hitler's notorious SS. The princess, who was born in what is now Czechoslovakia and who was brought up by her mother in Australia, insisted last week that she had known almost nothing about her father's Nazi past until the details were confirmed by her mother following the Daily Mirror story. Said Princess Michael: "Here I am, 40 years old, and I discover something that is really quite unpleasant."

Publicity has followed the princess since she married Prince Michael nearly seven years ago, partly because she has been divorced, partly because she is a Roman Catholic and greatly because of her self-assertiveness. When asked at a press conference about the Nazi connection, Prince Philip, the Queen's husband, replied, "You must be kidding. I'm not going to talk about that."

EAST-WEST A Promise Not to Shoot

Back in Washington, Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger was insisting that talks could not be held without compensation and a formal apology from Moscow. But at the Soviet officers' club in Potsdam, and later at the U.S. military liaison mission house, U.S. and Soviet generals were quietly trying to sort out their differences over last month's slaying of Major Arthur D. Nicholson Jr. by a Soviet soldier. The officer was on duty in East Germany as part of the agreement between Washington and Moscow that each side can maintain military observers in the two Germanys. Out of the four-hour meeting, arranged by the State Department, came no apology and no promise of compensation by the Soviets, only that these issues would be referred to a "higher authority" in Moscow. But the Soviets did offer one important concession: a ban on the "use of force or weapons" against American liaison mission patrols or personnel.

The State Department was eager to settle the matter before it ballooned into a major East-West dispute. Hoping to keep the issue as low-key as possible, the State Department waited four days to make public the Soviets' promise. The department now believes that Moscow cannot be pushed any further on the shooting.

UNESCO Resignation and Warning

It was a difficult week for UNESCO. First, Gerard Bolla, one of the United Nations agency's two deputy directors general, resigned. Officials maintained that Bolla, a Swiss civil servant, was leaving because his nine-month temporary contract had run out. But others in the organization said that Bolla was dissatisfied both by UNESCO's refusal to extend his contract by more than two months and by proposed reforms.

Then France's Foreign Minister Roland Dumas delivered a harsh warning to the agency's director general, Amadou Mahtar M'Bow. Dumas said that reforms of the Paris-based organization are "without doubt an indispensable guarantee for the survival of UNESCO. It is now up to the director general to establish a plan and a calendar in order to apply them." The message was significant because France had not only lobbied against U.S. withdrawal from UNESCO late last year but had agreed to contribute an extra $2 million to help make up for the loss of $43 million a year in U.S. contributions. France has been a mediator between Western countries, who are demanding a greater voice over the agency's budget, and Third World nations, who increasingly want to control the organization's programs.

TAIWAN Ex-Spy Chief Gets Life

The announcement of the verdict took only three minutes, and the accused were not even present. Even so, the air was filled with suspense when a five-judge military panel last week found Vice Admiral Wang Hsi-ling, the former head of Taiwan's military intelligence bureau, guilty of plotting the murder of Chinese- American Writer Henry Liu, who was gunned down at his Daly City, Calif., home last Oct. 15. The sentence: life imprisonment. Wang's two aides, Major General Hu Yi-min, deputy director of the bureau, and Colonel Chen Hu-men, another Defense Ministry official, were each given 2 1/2-year jail terms. The verdicts came ten days after the leader of Taiwan's powerful Bamboo Union Gang, Chen Chi-li, and his lieutenant, Wu Tun, were sentenced in a civilian court to life imprisonment for carrying out the murder.

The ex-intelligence chief's sentence, which will automatically be appealed, failed to mollify Liu's widow, who said she believes the killing was politically motivated. In Washington last week, the House of Representatives voted 387 to 2 for a nonbinding resolution urging Taiwan to send the two convicted gangsters to the U.S. to stand trial.

CHINA Minus 1 Million

No country in the world has more men and women under military command than China. The People's Liberation Army includes some 4 million regulars who are supported, when necessary, by a lightly armed Basic People's Militia of 4 million men and women and an unarmed Ordinary People's Militia of up to 6 million.

A leaner People's Liberation Army has been planned for some time, and Communist Party Leader Hu Yaobang announced last week what amounts to a crash diet: China will demobilize 1 million men and women by the end of 1986.

Hu did not indicate how many of the troops released from service will be regulars. In the past, the People's Liberation Army has helped absorb some of China's underemployed. For example, hundreds of thousands of troops work in railroad and work battalions. Whatever the fate of the newly demobilized thousands, the cuts should help streamline and modernize a relatively backward military machine. They also serve a broader purpose. Just six months ago, Defense Minister Zhang Aiping declared that defense production should take a backseat to building up the state economy.