Drift Toward the Summit

A White House limousine stopped at the Russian embassy on 16th Street one morning last week and picked up a burly passenger bundled up in a double-breasted blue overcoat. Escorted by two motorcycle cops, the car sped to the White House, where the State Department's Protocol Chief Wiley Buchanan Jr. escorted the visitor into the oval, green-walled office of the President of the United States.

Unerasable Smile. The caller was Mikhail Alekseevich Menshikov, Russia's new ambassador to the U.S. A foreign-trade specialist who persuasively sold the Soviet trade-plus-aid approach as ambassador to India, Envoy Menshikov, 55, is conspicuously suited to the Kremlin's peaceful-coexistence line. In black-and-white contrast to his dour, clam-mouthed predecessor, Georgy Zarubin, he flashes a wide and easy smile, spouts friendly sentiments in fluent English. Upon arrival in the U.S. a fortnight ago, he promptly declared himself an ambassador of "peace, friendship and cooperation." Last week he paid courtesy visits to Vice President Nixon and half a dozen State Department officials, stepped out in top hat and tails for the formal White House dinner for diplomats. Everywhere he went, he displayed a seemingly unerasable smile.

Apparently Menshikov smiled at his closed-door meeting with the President (nobody else was present except Protocol Chief Buchanan). Credentials-presenting ceremonies at the White House are usually routine, lasting five or ten minutes. But Menshikov's visit lasted 32 minutes. When press photographers asked Press Secretary James Hagerty about pictures, he said flatly: "No, we never have pictures of these calls." But a moment later his aide hove into view, calling, "Photographers!" The President himself had decided to break the rule.

Unwanted Meeting. Afterwards, Menshikov told newsmen that Ike and he had both "expressed the hope that the [summit] meeting will be organized." The remark had a prophetic ring: under subtle pressures of opinion at home and abroad, the U.S. seemed to be drifting inexorably toward a summit meeting without either wanting one or doing much to counter the pressures.

Back in mid-January, replying to Premier Bulganin's invitation to the summit, the President declared: "It would be essential that prior to such a meeting . . . complex matters should be worked on in advance through diplomatic channels and by our foreign ministers." Last week, when a press-conference questioner asked Secretary of State Dulles whether "it is essential to hold a foreign ministers' meeting prior to a summit conference," Dulles replied: "No, it isn't essential."

Dulles pointed out that the President's letter to Bulganin did not explicitly call for a foreign ministers' "meeting." But measured against that letter's tone and spirit, Dulles' outright "No, it isn't essential" seemed a step toward the summit, a step dictated by the haunting need to avoid seeming "rigid" in the eyes of neutrals, allies and the soft-line camp at home. Since the Russians had already conceded that the U.S. insistence on advance preparations is "correct," Dulles' concession seemed to leave no barrier to ambassador-level discussions of an agenda for a summit meeting that Dulles had declared in advance to be "futile."

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