Lift the Blockade?

Moscow this week announced that it was willing to lift the Berlin blockade--at a price. Moscow made two conditions: 1) the Big Four Council of Foreign Ministers must meet again to discuss the question of a single currency for Berlin "together with other questions bearing on Germany;" 2) the Western Powers must lift their counter-blockade by which they have prevented trade between Germany's eastern and western zones.

The Moscow announcement specifically stated that Russia was willing to lift the Berlin siege before the foreign ministers convene, if & when a date for the conference could be set. In the past, the Russians had insisted they would lift the blockade only after the ministers had met and reached agreement.

The Moscow statement, wrapped up in a brief dispatch by the Tass news agency, noted coldly that various reports about a possible lifting of the Berlin blockade had been spread in the "foreign press." To refute incorrect rumors, Tass deemed it necessary to set down "the facts as they are." Russia's U.N. Delegate Yakov Malik and U.S. Delegate Philip Jessup had been conducting talks on the subject of Berlin. According to Tass, the first of these conversations had taken place last February, the last almost two weeks ago.

All week, the "foreign press" had indeed speculated feverishly on the Berlin situation. The Paris newspaper Figaro reported that a tall, dark, mysterious man, who was neither a diplomat nor a Russian, had gone to Washington to extend "feelers." U.S. newspapermen picked up many a remote sound and relayed it homewards.

Some of them recalled such a portent as Gromyko smiling at the U.N. Assembly's opening session. Others reported that Russian officers, after months of isolation, showed up at a U.S. Army cocktail party in Berlin and were pretty pleasant. France's Foreign Minister Robert Schuman confirmed that U.S.-Russian talks had taken place--on the "corridor level."

The Russians were clearly eager to end the Berlin blockade. The fact that the bold, persistent Berlin airlift--and Berliners' dogged courage--had brought them to this point was a notable cold war victory for the West. But there was far more than that behind the Moscow statement.

The key was still Western Germany, whose recovery and independence Moscow had consistently tried to prevent.

The West seemed ready to agree to another Big Four conference, and to lift its counter-blockade. But it was not willing to abandon its plans for Western Germany. Day before the Tass announcement, the Western Powers reported full agreement with the West Germans on their proposed constitution. West Germany was closer to statehood than ever before (see below).

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