CURRENT INTELLIGENCE BULLETIN - 1955/05/14

• Document Type: SPECIALCOLLECTION
• Collection: Current/Central Intelligence Bulletin Collection
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): 03192934
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: U
• Document Page Count: 9
• Document Creation Date: September 20, 2019
• Document Release Date: September 26, 2019
• Publication Date: May 14, 1955

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14 May 1955
Copy No.
CURRENT INTELLIGENCE BULLETIN
DOCUMENT NO.
NO CHANGE IN CLASS.
C i DECLASSIFIED
CLASS. CHANGED TO: TS S C
NEXT REVIEW DATE: 20io
AUTH: HR 70-2
DATE: .9/1/6O_REVIEVVER:
Office of Current Intelligence
CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY
-cor-5ECRET
JA
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SUMMARY
SOVIET UNION
1. Comment on possible Soviet bloc military appointments (page 3).
2. Soviet leaders stress policy change and readiness to negotiate
(page 4).
3. Comment on redisposition of Soviet naval units (page 4).
FAR EAST
4. New crisis with Rhee over aid anticipated in June (page 5).
5. Large oil-drum loadings at Shanghai may be for Fukien airfields
(page 6).
SOUTH ASIA
6.
NEAR EAST - AFRICA
7. USSR assigns military attache to Lebanon and Syria (page 7).
* * * *
8. Yugoslav official reassures West on scheduled meeting with Soviet
leaders (page 8).
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SOVIET UNION
1. Comment on possible Soviet bloc military appointments:
Recent information suggests that Marshal
IS. Konev and Army General A.I. Antonov,
members of the Soviet military delegation
at the current Warsaw conference, will be appointed commander
and chief of staff, respectively, of the proposed unified Soviet bloc
military command.
The Moscow censor has passed Western
news stories alleging that Konev is to be the new commander. At
the Elbe veterans' reunion in Moscow on 12 May, Marshal Sokolovsky
parried the question, "Is it to be Konev?" by saying "NATO com-
mander Gruenther is going to be pleased with our choice."
Konev and General Gruenther had many
official contacts in Austria in 1945, when Konev was chief of Soviet
forces in Austria and Gruenther was deputy chief of American forces
there.
Antonov's probable appointment is suggested
by the fact that on 12 May he addressed a closed session of the confer-
ence on problems connected with the establishment of a combined
command. Among other assignments, he served as a deputy chief
of the Soviet General Staff from 1943 to 1947, and for several months
in 1945 he was chief.
Konev and Antonov are among several com-
manders of border military districts in the western USSR who were
replaced and returned to Moscow in recent months. Konev was re- -
cently identified as deputy minister of defense. Antonov's present
assignment is not known.
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2. Soviet leaders stress policy change and readiness to negotiate:
Comment: Soviet leaders
desire to arrange an East-West detente and to contrast this
position with the alleged American "policy of strength." Bulganin
followed a similar line at the October Revolution celebration last
year.
While the USSR suffers from economic
weaknesses, particularly in the fields of agriculture and labor pro-
ductivity, they can hardly be termed critical.
3. Comment on redisposition of Soviet naval units:
The move on 13 May of two Soviet
Sverdlov-class light cruisers and four
new destroyers from the Baltic probably
is a redeployment to augment the rela-
tively weak surface forces of the Northern or Pacific Fleets.
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Four light cruisers .and 33 destroyer-
type vessels are presently in the Northern Fleet; two heavy
cruisers and 45 destroyer-type vessels are in the Pacific Fleet.
In late March two floating drydocks capa-
ble of servicing Sverdlov-class cruisers left the Black Sea, re-
portedly for Petropavlovsk in the Far East. The move of these
docks to the Far East suggests that the cruisers leaving the Baltic
may ultimately be assigned to the Pacific Fleet. The immediate
destination of the warships, however, is believed to be the Northern
Fleet
FAR EAST
4. New crisis with Rhee over aid anticipated in June:
Economic Aid Co-ordinator Wood expects
"acrimonious controversy" and a major
crisis in South Korean-United States re-
lations to develop during economic dis -
cussions planned for June. He reports that President Rhee is
counting heavily on this conference and expects it to produce, at
a minimum, a fixed hwan-dollar exchange rate for at least one year.
Wood believes that Rhee will insist on fix-
ing the value of the hwan far above its actual value. This would
hamper anti-inflation efforts and greatly stimulate the black market
and windfall profits.
Comment: Rime's belief that a permanent
exchange rate will cure South Korea's inflation problem--a theory
not shared by his own officials--was one of the issues which delayed
for four months implementation of this year's $700,000,000 aid
program.
Rhee has already announced publicly that a
fixed rate will become effective 1 July. Other reports indicate he
plans to demand 90 percent of all American aid allocated to the Far
East in fiscal 1956.
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5. Large oil-drum loadings at Shanghai may be for Fukien airfields:
Barges were being loaded with oil drums
at almost every oil wharf in Shanghai in
early May,
possible that the Chinese Communists are using oil
barges to supply fuel to airfields in the Chekiang-Fukien areas,
moving by inshore routes and probably at night.
Comment: Shanghai, where most of East
China's oil storage facilities are located, would be the normal
source for fuel deliveries to airfields nearing completion in the
coastal areas opposite Formosa. In view of the difficulties of high-
way transport to these fields, the Chinese Communists may well
attempt to supply these new installations by sea.
there is a substantial movement
6.
of full and empty drums between Shanghai and points up the Yangtze
River, both to deliver petroleum products upstream and to pick up
vegetable oil for delivery to Shanghai.
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SOUTH ASIA
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NEAR EAST - AFRICA
7. USSR assigns military attache to Lebanon and Syria:
The American embassy in Beirut reports
that, according to the chief of staff of the
Lebanese army, the Soviet Union is as-
signing a military attache to Lebanon who
will also cover Syria. He will have two assistants stationed in
Beirut, with presumably at least the same number in Damascus.
Comment: The timing of these assign-
ments emphasizes Moscow's interest in the present uncertain situ-
ation in Syria. These assignments are part of a Soviet program to
accredit attaches to non-Orbit countries previously without such repre-
sentation. During 1954, Soviet service attaches were assigned for the
first time to Belgium, Egypt, Greece, India, the Netherlands, Palr,P1-
StaN and Yugoslavia.
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8. Yugoslav official reassures West on scheduled meeting with Soviet
leaders:
Yugoslav foreign minister Popovic empha-
sized on 13 May to the American ambassa-
dor in Belgrade that the meeting scheduled
for the end of this month between a Soviet
delegation including Khrushchev, Bulganin, and Mikoyan and the
top leaders of the Yugoslav government in no sense implied a fund-
amental change in the Yugoslav policy of cordial, relations with
Western countries. He interpreted the holding of the meeting in
Belgrade as a victory for the Yugoslav policy of firmness in the
face of Soviet threats, which was made possible by the support Yugo-
slavia had received from the West.
Stating that Belgrade's efforts paralleled
those of the West, Popovic said that full equality of rights and non-
interference in the internal affairs of the other nation would be the
basis of the meeting, in which Yugoslavia hoped to probe the sin-
cerity of Soviet intentions. The only item of the agenda revealed
by Popovic was the question of practical matters relating to "nor-
malization" of relations between Yugoslavia and the USSR.
Popovic was evasive on the question of
who proposed the meeting. The American, British and French
ambassadors are inclined to believe it was the USSR.
Comment: This dramatic Soviet gesture
is at the least intended to impress all Europeans with the sincer-
ity of the Soviet desire for a reduction of world tension.
The high level of the Soviet delegation
and its willingness to travel to Belgrade suggest that the USSR has
strong hopes of creating much closer ties with Yugoslavia, which
might go so far as intimate co-operation between the two Commu-
nist parties and a mutual security treaty between Moscow and Bel-
grade. Moscow probably calculates that even if such far-reaching
results cannot be attained, the visit-will yield greater Yugoslav
neutrality, both through a change in Belgrade's foreign policy and
through increased Western suspicion of Tito.
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Molotov's absence from the delegation is
probably accounted for by a belief that his presence would irritate
the Yugoslays because of Ms direct connection with the Soviet
break with Tito.
Yugoslav officials have repeatedly stated
that Soviet leaders have been seeking Belgrade's return to the Corn-
inform, but they have insisted that the USSR must be disabused
of the idea that Yugoslavia will surrender any independence in its
foreign policy.
A meeting of the two Communist nations
"at the summit" will probably strengthen Yugoslavia's tendencies
toward a neutral position and make Belgrade even more unwilling
to expand its military connections with the West. It is doubtful,
however, that Tito would be willing to withdraw from the Balkan
alliance or break his other Western ties in return for a Soviet
security treaty.
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