FOREIGN RELATIONS: After the Visit

Nikita Khrushchev flew on, and in the capitals of the world, diplomats settled down to the business of piecing together the results, real and implied, of his U.S. trip.

Most obvious of the results was Khrushchev’s removal of a deadline on the West for getting out of Berlin. At Camp David, President Eisenhower had flatly refused to discuss other subjects until Khrushchev specifically dumped the deadline. Khrushchev finally agreed, but refused to put the promise in writing. Instead he said he would publicly confirm it when he returned to Moscow. That, last week, he did.

The Berlin agreement was an agreement on the issue of deadline only; none of the critical basic problems about the future of Berlin or Germany were even touched upon, much less settled. But the removal of the deadline did help gain time, and both President Eisenhower and Secretary of State Christian Herter feel strongly that time works in the West’s favor. As Communist leaders are forced by their own internal conditions to pay more attention to consumer demands, as more of their citizens receive the mind-opening benefits of education, the likelihood becomes increasingly great for a liberalized system of government with which the West can live.

Among the other results of the U.S. visit of Khrushchev & Co.: SUMMIT CONFERENCE: “The conversations have, so far as I am personally concerned, removed many of the objections that I have heretofore held,” said President Eisenhower in reply to a press conference question about a summit meeting. The President’s point: with the Berlin deadline withdrawn, he was ready to go to the summit if and when U.S. allies agree.

DISARMAMENT: “Each stage of disarmament,” said Khrushchev in his departing Washington press conference, should be “accompanied by the development of inspection and control.” The West, accustomed to Russian doubletalk on disarmament and thoroughly unimpressed by Khrushchev’s big U.N. propaganda pitch, took a hard look at this statement, got ready to find out, when the nuclear-test-ban talks resume next month in Geneva, if the Russians will take a more realistic position on inspection.

INCREASED U.S.-U.S.S.R. TRADE: The Administration and Congress may relax some restrictions against U.S. trade with Russia, said Under Secretary of State C. Douglas Dillon, if Khrushchev follows through on his promise to reopen negotiations on the unpaid lend-lease debt, shows good faith by some reasonable payment on an obligation that the U.S. has already written down from $2.6 billion to $800 million. Moscow also published a fact that U.S. sources politely kept off the record for a week: Khrushchev asked industriailsts and financiers at a Washington dinner for loans to finance Soviet purchases in the U.S.

ATOMIC ENERGY FOR PEACEFUL USE: In Vienna, where Atomic Energy Chairman John McCone went to attend a meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency, word leaked out that McCone and his Russian counterpart, Vasily S. Emelyanov, will trade inspection trips of their respective atomic energy labs and installations. A member of the Khrushchev party, Emelyanov told McCone that the development of atoms for peaceful use must be a joint program, “because it is just too expensive for one country alone.”

In attempting to add up the credits—and the debits—of the Khrushchev trip, no one could arrive at a flat sum. The West has many times before received promises from Communism and seen them broken without the blinking of an eye. This time, if the Soviet leader really meant what he said, it appeared that at least some few forward steps had been taken toward creating a peaceful atmosphere. But if, on the other hand, all the talk was just more Communist bunkum, then in terms of world hopes raised and dashed, the Khrushchev trip could only be a fiasco. In either case, it was certainly not yet time for the free world to relax its guard.