The Exposure

In a single afternoon's work last week Russia's pedestrian Andrei Gromyko swept away nearly seven months of diplomatic maneuvering over Berlin and nakedly exposed the Geneva conference as an exercise in futility.

Over the four weeks since the Big Four foreign ministers first assembled in Geneva's Palais des Nations, the Western position had boiled down to a single basic proposal: the U.S., Britain and France would give Khrushchev a summit meeting in return for Russian agreement that the Western powers are entitled to maintain occupation forces in Berlin, and to unhindered access to the city via East Germany.

Last week, in a long-awaited "counter-proposal," Gromyko made it clear that Russia had no interest in such a bargain. Instead, he brazenly announced that Moscow would "grant" the Western powers one more year of occupation rights in Berlin--provided they would reduce their forces in West Berlin to "symbolic" levels (about 50 from each nation), would liquidate all anti-Communist propaganda and espionage organizations in the city, and would agree, when the year was up, to accept an all-German committee (equal membership on both sides) to talk about "reunification." In a final burst of arrogance, Gromyko added that unless the West accepted these conditions, "the Soviet Union will not be willing to ... consent to continuation of the occupation regime in Berlin."

Let's Forget. "This is an ultimatum." retorted Britain's Selwyn Lloyd--and, in fact, Gromyko's terms amounted to little more than a revival of the original "Get-out-of-Berlin" ultimatum that Khrushchev served on the West last November, to be effective after six months (May 27). U.S. Secretary of State Christian Herter, in his outrage, made a solitary trip to Gromyko's villa to warn the Russian Foreign Minister that "the early days of next week will determine the outcome of the conference." Deliberately, Herter let slip the fact that his plane was on stand-by notice, and when Gromyko protested that he was willing to go on negotiating indefinitely, Herter snapped back: "Well, I'm not."

But within three days of Gromyko's bombshell, the West's first toughness began to erode. At a plenary conference session, Britain's Lloyd, in a boys-will-be-boys tone, suggested that everybody just forget "Mr. Gromyko's contribution of Tuesday and Wednesday . . . and get back to real business." Herter, in firmer vein, prodded Gromyko into publicly stating that he had not meant his "proposal" as an ultimatum. As Herter well knew, however, this did not imply an iota of change in Gromyko's stand. And as if to make that clear, the Soviet Foreign Minister for the first time adopted a threatening note over Western insistence that there must be progress at Geneva to justify any summit talks. Said Gromyko: "Should any state put up ... obstacles to a summit meeting, that state will take responsibility for the consequences."

Signals from Britain. At week's end Western spokesmen said that the conference was on a "day-to-day basis," might break up any time unless Gromyko offered some sign of being ready to negotiate. But the fact seemed to be that Herter & Co. were not only reluctant to accept the propaganda onus of ending the conference, but also shrank from the prospect that a breakdown of the negotiations might spur the Russians to some kind of action against West Berlin (whose Mayor Willy Brandt turned up at Geneva last week).

To undercut the Western position still further came unmistakable signals from Britain that, to Tories and Socialists alike, the Geneva stalemate simply made a summit conference more urgent than ever. Said Prime Minister Harold Macmillan: "We cannot abandon the people of West Berlin ... On the other hand, we have to be reasonable and try to work out new arrangements . . ." At a miners' rally in Wales before a crowd of 50,000, mercurial Aneurin Bevan, the man who would be Britain's Foreign Secretary if Labor should win the next election, cast responsibility to the winds. "There is no justification at all for the Geneva talks to break down," said Bevan. "If they do, it will be largely because the Western powers are anxious to avoid a summit conference." As though it might fix things, Bevan added that he and Labor Party Leader Hugh Gaitskell will go to Moscow in August "to try to undo the harm Mr. Macmillan did when he went there."

No Charge? Perhaps Nikita Khrushchev had never wanted summit talks enough to pay any substantial price for them. But however badly he wanted them, the Western performance last week was likely to encourage him in the belief that he need not pay much of anything at all. Skillfully as they had defended their positions in the first weeks of the conference, Herter and his colleagues had now seriously to consider whether anything short of a Western walkout at Geneva could convince Moscow that it had anything to lose by playing it tough.

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