Monday, Jun. 25, 1979

Two Turtledoves.

Soviet Communist Party Chief Leonid Brezhnev likes flashy new automobiles, and his ventures to the summit have brought him several of them.

When President Richard Nixon flew to Moscow in 1972, he presented the Russian with a Cadillac. When Brezhnev returned the visit in Washington in 1973, Nixon provided a Lincoln Continental. Nixon went back to Moscow in 1974, this time turning over a sporty Chevrolet Monte Carlo. President Ford, conferring with Brezhnev in Vladivostok in 1974, broke the pattern: he armed his host against the severe Soviet winter by taking off his own Alaskan wolfskin coat and presenting it to Brezhnev.

Last week President Carter selected the most symbolic--if least utilitarian--present Brezhnev has yet received from his American counterparts: a pair of porcelain "Doves of Peace." The sculpture, made by the New Jersey studio, Cybis, ordinarily would cost $3,500 to $4,000, but this was a special and more costly design; the turtledoves were passing an olive branch from one to the other. Brezhnev's 'return gift to Carter? A surprise, said the secretive Soviets. And so it remained as the meetings began.

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