CANADA: Nehru in a Hamburg

Canada’s delegation to the NATO Council meeting in Paris this week is one of the strongest the country has ever sent to a world conference. Two Cabinet ministers and an even dozen other officials will accompany External Affairs Chief Lester Bowles (“Mike”) Pearson to Paris.

Ever since his return last month from a visit to the Soviet Union, Pearson has been calling for “a searching reexamination” of NATO policy. Soviet Leaders Khrushchev and Bulganin apparently convinced him of the Russians’ determination never to allow the unification of Germany as long as West Germany stays in the alliance. Mike Pearson, whose neutralist views have led some critics to call him a “Nehru in a Homburg,” has hinted that he now leans toward the idea of releasing West Germany from NATO in the hope that the Russians would then free the entire country. The West Germans, of course, do not want any such “bargain.” Pearson dodged with practiced skill, but did not deny it when a correspondent asked whether he would raise this issue in Paris. “We’d better wait and see,” he said. “That’s a very good question.”