Meeting in Room 5106

Something about Washington divests diplomats of their aura of glamor. The sense of international drama that runs through secret meetings in ancient buildings in London's Whitehall, or on Paris' Quai d'Orsay, is lost in the State Department's Room 5106 ("the largest conference room") in Foggy Bottom. Bereft of the vintage attention of exquisitely correct French huissiers, the men of diplomacy get a meat-and-potatoes feeling when they are shown around Washington by polite young men in business suits wearing blue lapel ribbons imprinted USHER.

But if Washington did little for ceremony as the West's Big Four foreign ministers gathered last week in Room 5106 to talk about the May 11 foreign ministers' conference with the U.S.S.R., the city at least provided a down-to-earth setting for some down-to-earth discussion.

Complete Plan. In closed-door secrecy, the U.S.'s Acting Secretary of State Christian Herter, Britain's Foreign Secretary Selwyn Lloyd, France's Foreign Minister Maurice Couve de Murville, and West Germany's Foreign Minister Heinrich von Brentano went over proposals developed by their hard-working careermen. Britain's Lloyd said he thought that the West should offer some concession to the U.S.S.R. to lure the Kremlin into detailed talks on Germany; then, with Russian interest whetted, suggest some concessions by the Communists. Couve de Murville and Von Brentano said they thought the West should make concessions only if Russia offered concessions first.

The U.S.'s Herter took a position in between, contended that the West should offer the U.S.S.R. "a reasonable plan"--and, as it turned out, his was the only complete plan of proposals and positions, as opposed to the other diplomats' "pieces of plans." Time after time, in polite discussion, Herter invited anybody who sniped at the U.S. plan to offer up alternatives. None were forthcoming.

Big Provision. The U.S. plan was apparently the basic plan that would be put up to the Kremlin at the May 11 conference. Its outline, subject to some reshaping at another Big Four meeting in Paris at month's end: 1) the West would offer such "military concessions" as beginnings of disarmament in small zones of Germany, provided--a big provision--that the Russians accept inspection and work toward a general disarmament-with-inspection plan. This would be offered in return for 2) such "political concessions" as Kremlin agreement to make a start on German reunification. Both sides would encourage more contacts between West Germany and East Germany; the West would not recognize East Germany before genuine reunification but might be willing to deal with East German officials as Russian "agents." If the Russians agreed to a reunification plan, said Herter, the problem of Berlin, the natural capital, would solve itself. If they did not, the West would keep its troops in Berlin, although it might be willing to negotiate on some measure of United Nations supervision.

With that much agreed upon, the Big Four adjourned to tell the rest of the NATO ministers what they had planned.

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