March to the Summit

In three parallel notes the U.S., Britain and France last week proposed to the Kremlin that the Big Four hold a foreign ministers' conference at Geneva starting May 11, with a view to a later parley at the summit. The wording of the notes reflected the varying degrees of Western enthusiasm. The U.S. said it would be "ready" to go to the summit as soon as "developments in the foreign ministers' meeting justify." Britain said it would be "glad" to go to the summit as soon as the foreign ministers' talks "warrant." France said it would be "disposed to accept" a summit only if the foreign ministers made "genuine progress." The notes underlined the very real reluctance of both the U.S.'s Dwight Eisenhower and France's Charles de Gaulle (see FOREIGN NEWS) to be pushed willy-nilly to the summit, as contrasted with the eagerness of Britain's Harold Macmillan to start negotiations at the highest level.

Sensing disquiet and confusion about his attitude toward a summit meeting, President Eisenhower told his press conference: "I want to make this very clear . . . [No one] can command anybody else to come to a summit meeting. And you can't bluff them or blackmail them or anything else. This is to be a meeting, if there is one, of heads of government who are acting voluntarily and because of their beliefs in the possibilities with some kind of grounds for such a belief that real measures can be discussed profitably by all of us." He stressed that a foreign ministers' meeting must first show "progress"--but he was notably vague about what "progress" meant. Back home in Britain, Macmillan simply told the House of Commons: "As regards the likelihood of a summit meeting, I would say everybody seems to think there will be one."

The fact was that the question of whether or not there would be a summit conference had become almost academic; at their Camp David talks (TIME, March 30), President Eisenhower and Prime Minister Macmillan had set into motion a march to the summit that could be diverted only by complete Soviet obduracy. As of last week, the basic problem was no longer one of getting to the summit. Rather, it was one of reconciling viewpoints so as to make absolutely certain that the West presents a united front once the summit is reached.

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