Summit & Substance

The text of the latest message from the Kremlin, delivered to President Eisenhower and to the chiefs of other Western nations last week, set the world off on fresh speculation about a summit meeting. From Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko came an aide-memoire agreeing to a pre-summit conference of foreign ministers--a condition once insisted upon by the U.S. but since dropped (TIME, Feb. 24). This foreign ministers' conference, Gromyko added, should handle the housekeeping details of the summit, i.e., time, place, agenda, and should be convened in April. Gromyko did not say whether the foreign ministers ought also to explore the prospects for agreement on points of substance--another U.S. condition--to find out whether a parley at the summit should be held at all.

What the Kremlin appeared to be driving for, even at the price of making procedural concessions, was a new series of parleys for propaganda's sake. In these, surface impressions of East-West cordiality, leaders photographed together smiling, exchanging toasts, etc., would cloak the absence of any real thaw of the cold war.

Already the U.S.S.R.'s gregarious new Ambassador to the U.S. Mikhail Menshikov, making his rounds of visits from the White House to Capitol Hill, was making headlines with meaningless proposals for a U.S.-U.S.S.R. friendship pact as a step toward "peace on our planet."

The U.S. intends to insist--at any foreign ministers' conference and beyond--that questions of substance be discussed and prospects of agreement thoroughly canvassed before any new impression of thaw is created. For example, the U.S., as the President told the U.S.S.R.'s Bulganin in January, wants to talk about: 1) reunification of Germany by free elections--agreed to by the U.S.S.R. at the parley at the summit in July 1955 but since ignored by the Russians; 2) the right of satellite peoples to choose their own form of government; 3) a package disarmament plan linking foolproof stoppage of nuclear tests to foolproof stoppage of nuclear production; 4) outer space for peaceful purposes.

Agreement to discuss these questions of substance with a view to making concessions would be a price for the Kremlin to pay--but it is for the Kremlin to decide whether it wants a parley at the summit badly enough in fact to make a real down payment.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.