What New Initiatives?

Seldom in history has a diplomatic crisis been so well advertised in advance. From Moscow came leaden hints that only the U.S. elections on Nov. 6 were holding up the next round of the Berlin struggle--a round that just might bring Nikita Khrushchev to the U.N. and might also bring the long-threatened peace treaty for East Germany this fall.

In reply, the U.S. began a rolling barrage of warnings. Attorney General Robert Kennedy told an audience in Las Vegas of a "great crisis" ahead; Secretary of

State Dean Rusk expressed grave concern over Berlin to virtually every visiting foreign minister at the U.N.; Defense Secretary Robert McNamara issued a public warning that nuclear arms, if necessary, would be used by the U.S. to maintain Western rights in the surrounded city.

Ideas Afloat. All the noise reflected a suspicion in Washington that Khrushchev and his advisers may not really believe that the U.S. or its Allies will fight in a Berlin showdown. Kennedy believes that a disastrous collision can best be avoided if the signals of U.S. determination are repeated again and again, loud and clear.

At the same time, Washington kept floating more ideas for "fresh initiatives" to break the Berlin deadlock. Most of them envisioned closer ties between West Germany and West Berlin. In some Washington quarters, there was talk of incorporation of West Berlin into West Germany by official decree, and stationing of West German troops in the isolated city. At the very least, insisted Administration officials, the U.S. expected units of West Germany's powerful 375,000-man Bundeswehr to declare themselves available for duty as Berlin blockade busters. These notions fitted in with the thinking of visiting Mayor Willy Brandt, who believes that four-power status for all Berlin--meaning Western rights in East Berlin--has become a fiction. He suggests that, instead of clinging to this fiction, the West concentrate on securing West Berlin, with growing participation by West Germany. He also proposes a plebiscite in which West Berliners could declare whether they want closer ties to Bonn and the continued presence of Allied forces. In return. Brandt would increase contacts with the East German regime.

Washington also revived the idea that access to Berlin might be controlled by an international authority, including the big powers. East and West Germany, plus a group of satellites and neutrals.

Just Keeping Busy. West German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer growled no to almost the entire list of suggestions. He seemed more receptive than before to the idea of an inter national access authority, but he thought the plebiscite idea was just plain silly, utterly rejected the idea of making West Berlin a part of West Germany and stationing Bonn troops there. Adenauer's reasoning: any West German participation in the defense of Berlin will undermine the concept of four-power occupation control of the city, which, fiction or not, he still considers the basis of Western presence in Berlin.

All that emerged from a foreign affairs debate in the Bundestag was a government-backed resolution urging the U.S., Russia, Britain and France to set up a permanent four-power conference "to solve the German question." During the noisy sessions, Adenauer rose to proclaim hotly his full solidarity with U.S. Berlin policy. But opposition delegates could not forgive a passage in Adenauer's policy speech which sneered at "those who constantly expect initiatives . . . for the sake of remaining busy." Added der Alte: "As long as the Soviet Union insists on the division of Germany . . . most of the initiatives which we are urged to take will be devoid of sense."

At week's end the White House announced that Adenauer would arrive in Washington on the day after elections to talk it all over with John F. Kennedy.

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