International: Stop & Go

At the Paris Foreign Ministers’ deputies’ meeting, Andrei Gromyko acted like a capricious traffic cop, changing red & green signals with bewildering speed. The 19th meeting to draw up an agenda for a Big Four Foreign Ministers’ conference opened on the usual Red note: the West is the “aggressor . . . slanderous, absurd, preposterous.” The meeting appeared headed for complete stalemate.

Suddenly the light turned green. Russia had some new propositions: it would drop its insistence on discussing alleged violations of the Potsdam agreement, drop its demand that German rearmament be a separate agenda subject, agree to talk not only about disarming but also about the level of existing armaments.

The West perked up, asked for time to study the proposals. Le Monde optimistically headlined its story: “Monsieur Gromyko’s Happy Proposition.”

At the next session, U.S. Delegate Philip Jessup agreed that Gromyko’s proposals “had considerably narrowed the gap.” But, added Jessup, aware that Soviet verbiage usually conceals a trap, the West wanted further clarification. Growled Gromyko: “The Soviet text means what it says.” He wanted a yes or no answer. When he couldn’t get one, the light turned red again.

Now, said Gromyko, he wanted the agenda to include the Atlantic pact, U.S. bases in Europe and the Near East, Italian treaty violations, and the question of denazification and treatment of war criminals in Germany and Austria.

At week’s end, the deputies lunched privately and decided that the conference had bogged down completely in a morass of side issues. Would Gromyko agree to drop nonessentials, try for agreement on the big question? It looked like the last chance. Gromyko said yes and the light was green again.

As this week began, French Delegate. Alexandre Parodi hopefully outlined an agenda intended, he said, “to marry both the Western and Russian viewpoints.” But Gromyko did not like the order of the items. Moreover, said the Russian, what about the U.S. bases in Europe? Once more the light was red.