Telegram from Pyongyang to Bucharest, TOP SECRET, No. 76.033, Urgent

On February 5, A. Lazar received T. Surgov, Second Secretary of the Bulgarian Embassy to Pyongyang. Surgov wanted to know if, during the visit of comrade Gheorghe Apostol, the North Koreans had mentioned any details about their participation in the international meeting in Budapest, whether they had brought up the issue of how to solve the USS Pueblo incident, and whether the North Korean leadership had given us any hints about when reunification would take place.

A. Lazar said that he had not attended the discussions of the two delegations, but afterwards, he had noticed that the Korean Workers’ Party had not taken a firm decision with respect to its participation in the international meeting in Budapest. With respect to the other issues raised by Surgov, the Romanian diplomat said that they had not been discussed in detail and that he could not decipher the intentions of the North Koreans as these issues were mentioned in passing.

Surgov said that he raised the first question because Soviet and Czech diplomats in Pyongyang were spreading the rumor that the delegation of the Romanian Communist Party tried to influence the leadership of the Korean Workers’ Party to take part in the international conference in Budapest and to adopt a similar position to its own. A. Lazar said that the Romanian Communist Party had been consulting and would continue to do so with all parties on the main problems of common interest and on the matters of the international communist movement and it would be wrong to think that this activity was an attempt to exert influence. A. Lazar said that if the Soviets, or any other [party], believe that the Korean Workers’ Party can be convinced to take part in the conference or dissuaded from doing so, they should carry out this kind of action themselves, as the organizers of this conference in Budapest.

On a different matter, the Bulgarian diplomat said that T. [Todor] Zhivkov cancelled his visit to Havana, arguing that he could not have subscribed to the claims of the Cuban leadership with respect to the anti-party Soviet cliques which had been discovered and unmasked recently within the Communist Party of Cuba.

Signed: N. Popa