Starting All Over

One bright morning last week the highest ranking Soviet official ever to visit the young German Federal Republic stepped down from a silvery Tu-104 jet airliner in Frankfurt, and in his honor West Germany grudgingly broke out the Soviet Russian flag. First Deputy Premier Anastas I. Mikoyan had come to sign the $750 million, three-year trade agreement recently negotiated between Bonn and Moscow (TIME, April 21). As the ink dried on his signature, Mikoyan delivered a short and pointed speech: "If the American crisis continues it will have its effect on Europe. There will be more sellers than buyers in the world. Keep that in mind."

The new trade agreement will amount to only 5% of West Germany's foreign trade. Mikoyan himself recalled that Germany once sent 40% of its exports to Russia, and some of his hearers were reminded that the shrewd little Armenian had been around before: it was he who negotiated a trade agreement with Nazi Germany shortly before the cynical Molotov-Ribbentrop 1939 treaty that was the prelude to World War II.

The chill of such memories and the barrier of hostile intentions underlay all the official amenities. In the circumstances Mikoyan performed adroitly, alternating charm and the needle, and conceding nothing.

Dwarfs & Giants. At a reception for 600 given by Foreign Minister Heinrich von Brentano, at posh La Redoute, Mikoyan at first sipped listlessly at his champagne, having previously confessed that he was not much of a drinker ("Whisky I don't take at all because of the smell. I drank it once in America"). Then as ebullient Defense Minister Franz Josef Strauss charged into the room, Mikoyan's sour mien brightened. He opened the conversation bluntly. "You are a nice man, but we don't particularly like your speeches. Why are you arming with nuclear weapons?" The florid Bavarian stood his ground. "We are a dwarf," he replied equably. "You are a giant."

"We don't want to be a giant; we want to be friends." countered Mikoyan. As the portentous raillery went on, a crowd gathered. Addressing himself to Finance Minister Franz Etzel and pointing to Strauss, Mikoyan said: "You must give no more money to this man." Replied Etzel: "Fine, you set East Germany free, and I will cut him off the budget."

Setting East Germany free was farthest from Mikoyan's mind. This became apparent at a Russian reception for 800, attended by Chancellor Konrad Adenauer, 82, who rarely goes to such night affairs. For a time, the two disappeared into a side dining room. Through the translucent door they could be seen gesticulating in heated discussion.

Water over the Dam. Mikoyan seemed perfectly ready to accept the continued existence of a divided Germany, and at a big official dinner he even made a proposal about it. "How dangerous for Germany to follow its present path," he said. "Atomic armament can only mean eventual unhappiness--and perhaps destruction--for the German people." But if only West Germany would agree to "remain free of nuclear weapons." either on its own decision or by NATO agreement, the Soviet Union in event of war "would be prepared to abstain from using nuclear weapons against any object whatsoever in the Federal Republic." Brentano was taken somewhat aback by this specious proposal but quickly rebutted: "We will throw away all our weapons, of every kind, if the Soviet Union would do the same. Let us work towards a regularized disarmament agreement."

As for German reunification, Mikoyan made it clear that this was something for West and East German governments (which do not recognize one another) to work out together, and if they could not, the big powers could do nothing about it. What then of the 1955 summit agreement at Geneva, between Eisenhower, Bulganin, Eden and Faure, to reunify Germany through free elections? Oh that, said Mikoyan, would have no place in a future summit agenda: "Since then a lot of water has gone over the dam, and much has changed. That is all in the past, and it is necessary to start all over again."

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