Stolen Plutonium

In your otherwise admirable editorial on the menace of the trade in black market plutonium (Aug. 19), you state, “Even in the chilliest Cold War days, international civilian terrorism was one area in which East-West cooperation could usually be counted on.”

I have to take issue with that. After all, the Czech communist government was one of the chief weapons suppliers to terrorists, from Libya to the IRA, besides providing medical treatment and rest and relaxation facilities for terrorists. The KGB surely knew of these activities, and did nothing to stop them. Indeed, the former Soviet Union itself was the site of various training schools for terrorists, including Palestinians and others.

On those occasions when the Soviets cooperated it was likely to be because Soviet nationals had been victims of terrorism in one form or another. But the general Soviet attitude was that terrorism served their interests, and they were hardly paragons of virtue in cooperating to bring international pressure on various terrorist groups.

ALLAN S. NANES

Simi Valley