The Apple & the Orchard

Back in Moscow after three weeks in the U.S., Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko this week faces the job of reporting to his boss, Nikita Khrushchev, who in turn faces the task of mounting a big show before the forthcoming 22nd Soviet Communist Party Congress. Neither Gromyko nor Khrushchev have any real claim to success in Russia's effort to push the West out of Berlin.

With some justice, Gromyko can complain about the inscrutable Americans, for during much of last week the U.S. flickered with semiofficial hints of compromise, most of which were later denied. In sum, however, Gromyko's report to his boss is that the U.S. is ready to talk, even to make concessions--but only after Russia shows a willingness to give considerably more in return than it has so far.

On the Russian scheme to internationalize Berlin, in exchange for as yet undefined guarantees of Western access, he can relay a remark of President Kennedy's that should be appreciated by Khrushchev, famous for his similes. Said Kennedy to Gromyko: "You have offered to trade us an apple for an orchard. We do not do that in this country."

Test of Faith. The White House meeting between the President and the Russian ambassador began amiably enough.

As the two men sat face to face in the upstairs Oval Room--Kennedy in his rocker, Gromyko in an easy chair--the President remarked, "I am sorry Mrs. Kennedy isn't here; she is up in Rhode Island with the babies." Courteously, Gromyko replied, "Give her my best." With that, the business began.

John Kennedy had no intention of confining himself to Europe, for high on his list was the continuing Communist buildup in Laos and the fighting in South Viet Nam, far away in Southeast Asia. The President reminded Gromyko that he had agreed with Khrushchev on an independent and neutral Laos at their Vienna meeting last June, made it clear that the U.S. considers Russia's role there a test of its willingness to negotiate in good faith. Gromyko replied that Moscow also favored a solution in Laos, but he volunteered no method of achieving it.

On Berlin, neither Kennedy nor Gromyko went into the fine details that had been touched on in previous Rusk-Gromyko talks. Kennedy's carefully prepared play was suddenly to back away from all the talk about negotiation; he wanted merely to mention the general areas that the U.S. might be willing to discuss, and to state once again the U.S.'s firm intent to defend West Berlin. So far, said John Kennedy bluntly, Russia had made no acceptable proposals for any possible bargain; until it did, the U.S. was not interested in negotiations, either on the foreign ministers' level or at the summit.

There was a lingering feeling among White House staffers that the Soviet tone, if not Soviet thinking, had changed. Said one official: "The Russians right now seem to want these Berlin talks more than we do, and we intend to take advantage of that." But in his White House talk, Gromyko seemed to be without any instructions from Moscow pointing toward conciliation. The first full hour was, in fact, taken up with the reading and translation of a Soviet memorandum, in which Gromyko droned out the familiar Russian position on Berlin. Thus, the talk gave President Kennedy little reason to believe that the Russians were ready to negotiate on any basis but that of their own flat conditions.

The Three Demands. From his own earlier talks with Gromyko, U.S. Secretary of State Dean Rusk had drawn some tentative conclusions: the Russians 1) are willing to stretch their "deadline" for the threatened Berlin crisis far beyond the end of the year, so long as "fruitful negotiations" are in prospect, and 2) are not really eager to hand over complete sovereignty--and the power to touch off a war--to East German Puppet Boss Walter Ulbricht, even if East Germany does get its promised peace treaty.

Repeatedly, Rusk--and Kennedy--warned Moscow of the U.S. intention to fight rather than yield on its three basic demands for West Berlin:

> The continued presence of U.S., British and French troops in the city.

> Their free use of access routes to and from the city.

> Political and economic freedom for West Berliners themselves.

While these basic rights are not negotiable, other things are, and both the U.S. and Russia know it. The possible negotiating points remain the same: limited recognition of the East German regime by permitting East Germans instead of Russians to stamp Allied travel documents on the West Berlin Autobahn and similar low-level technical liaison; agreement not to give Adenauer's West German army atomic weapons; acceptance of Communism's Oder-Neisse line, the river boundary that Russia carved between Poland and East Germany after World War II, handing over former German territory to the Poles. In fact, probably only a war can change the existence of these three Germanys--West, East and Polish.

Soft Wave? The mere discussion of possible concessions was denounced as a bad tactical blunder by West Germany and France. To Konrad Adenauer's government, it seemed time for a counteroffensive against the Kennedy Administration's "soft wave."

The government's Christian Democratic party foreign policy spokesman, Ernst Majonica, demanded that the U.S. get back to the main target--German reunification. "If one pays for a solution of the present Berlin crisis, one only whets the further appetite of the Soviets," he said. "No price will change the geographic position of Berlin. Who will prevent Moscow from unleashing a new crisis in the near future?"

Meanwhile, the East-West barrier in Berlin itself exploded with new violence. Now, for the first time, German police on both sides were exchanging gunshots as well as curses and tear gas. Each day brought new incidents. One evening, two young East Berliners on an apartment-house rooftop tried to escape by jumping into the net of West Berlin firemen on the street below. But East Berlin cops dashed up to head them off, began shooting. West Berlin police fired back, wounding a Communist cop. Then, from the darkness above, a body came hurtling down; one of the escapers had leaped for the net, screaming "Freiheit!" (freedom). He missed the net by twelve feet and died on the pavement where he fell.

Each night the crack of gunfire along the frontier signaled another escape--or failure. Despite the odds, 50 new refugees made it to freedom every 24 hours. But it was getting tougher, for the Communists were building the barrier higher and broader. Hearing the news from home, West Berlin's Mayor Willy Brandt, visiting the U.S., grimly told a Manhattan audience that whatever else is negotiated, "that wall in Berlin must come down."

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