CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS A VICTORY, KHRUSHCHEV BELIEVED

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: TUESDAY, January 7, 1992                   TAG: 9201070172
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                LENGTH: Medium
CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS A VICTORY, KHRUSHCHEV BELIEVED
Contrary to the popular view of the time, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev considered the outcome of the 1962 Cuban missile crisis a significant Soviet victory because he elicited a pledge from President Kennedy not to invade Cuba.
Khrushchev's thoughts were outlined in an extraordinary exchange of post-crisis letters with Kennedy that the State Department made public on Monday after keeping them secret for more than 29 years.
The letters highlight the hopes, fears and deep mistrust of the two leaders as they sought to come to grips with the aftermath of the most dangerous nuclear crisis the world has confronted.
The disclosure of the letters ended a four-year campaign for their release by the National Security Archives, a private foreign policy research group based in Washington. All told, 15 letters between Oct. 30 and Dec. 19, 1962, were released.
Two days after the crisis ended, Khrushchev wrote Kennedy, "We received your assurances that you would not invade Cuba and would not permit others to do it and on this condition we withdraw the weapons which you called offensive.
"As a result, there has been practically achieved the purpose which had been intended to be achieved through the shipments of means of defense."
At the time, the outcome of the crisis was widely viewed as an American triumph because Kennedy had been able to induce Khrushchev to dismantle the missiles the Soviets had secretly sent to the island but which were detected by U.S. reconnaissance planes.
There is little new information in the letters, but they underscored once again the difficulties the two sides experienced in working out the final details of the tentative agreement that defused the threat of a nuclear holocaust.
The exchanges indicated the concern of the two leaders that the agreement could have fallen apart, reviving the crisis.
For his part, Kennedy expressed grave concern about the opposition of Cuban President Fidel Castro to outside verification that the missiles had indeed been withdrawn, and to initial refusal to go along with the U.S. demand that several high-performance Soviet bombers be removed as part of the bargain.
While Khrushchev sought to minimize the significance of the bombers, Kennedy said their presence in Cuba was a matter of "great importance" to the United States.
"These bombers could carry nuclear weapons for long distances, and they are clearly not needed, any more than missiles, for purely defensive purposes on the island of Cuba," Kennedy wrote in reply to the Soviet leader.
"Thus in the present context their continued presence would sustain the grave tension that has been created, and their removal, in my view, is necessary to a good start on ending the recent crisis."
After weeks of sparring, the flap over the bombers ended during the third week of November with an agreement to return them to the Soviet Union.
Khrushchev, in turn, questioned the good faith of the American side and wrote to Kennedy more than a week after the crisis supposedly was settled that the danger was not yet over because of American actions.
Criticizing the continued American blockade of Cuba and alleged U.S. violation of Cuban territorial waters and airspace, Khrushchev wrote:
"If this continues, confidence in your obligations will thus be undermined which can only . . . throw us back to the positions to which we must not return after the liquidation of such a dangerous situation."

by Archana Subramaniam by CNB