The Glacier

With all the assurance of a man operating a crooked roulette wheel, Nikita Khrushchev last week in Moscow proclaimed his confidence that the Geneva conference "will be successful." Folksy as ever, Nikita went on to explain: "We have a Russian saying that goes something like this: to achieve something difficult it is necessary to eat a pood* of salt. The foreign ministers may have to eat a great deal of salt. But even if they do not succeed in eating or digesting it on the first try, they should make new efforts."

The salt consumption in Geneva's Palais des Nations had already reached indigestible proportions. Day after day last week, the foreign ministers of Russia and the Western powers lectured away at each other (see box), neither side budging an iota from its own plan. For the Western powers, the week of rhetoric had one advantage; it was an opportunity to impress on the world's consciousness the sweep and fairness of their package plan for German reunification and European security (TIME, May 25). But by midweek a fair share of the 120-odd diplomats and diplomatic gun bearers seated around the table in the council chamber were visibly drowsing through all speeches.

Giving away nothing, Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko tried a feeble side game of trying to drive a wedge between Britain and the other Western powers. The Russians lost no opportunity to point out to U.S., French and West German diplomats how well Gromyko and Britain's Selwyn Lloyd got along, regularly praised Lloyd's speeches as "reasonable" and "well thought out."

With the inadvertent aid of the 1,100 newsmen in Geneva, most of whom found little to write about beyond tactical differences among the Western powers, the Russian ploy was successful enough to provoke London's BBC into an irate accusation that the West Germans were conducting a "whispering campaign" against the British delegation. But with the foreign ministers themselves, the Russian maneuver was a flat failure: Selwyn Lloyd argued the West's case as stoutly as anyone. When Gromyko approached Lloyd privately to reiterate Khrushchev's proposals for Berlin, Lloyd coldly replied: "If that's the best you can offer, it's a poor way to start negotiations."

One All. Gromyko & Co. labored endlessly, too, to build up the prestige of their East German stooges and to label the West Germans as neo-Nazi warmongers. Although both East and West Germans had been admitted to the conference at separate tables only as "advisers," the Russians demanded that the speeches of Lothar Bolz, East Germany's pompous, vitriol-spewing Foreign Minister, be published as part of the official conference record. (Refusing, the conference secretariat noted that the question was one on which there was "permanent disagreement.") And at the week's first formal session, Gromyko, who was chairman, broke an implicit promise to let Secretary of State Christian Herter speak first by unexpectedly recognizing Bolz--who promptly launched into a Gromyko-like denunciation of West German rearmament, while Herter fumbled with his spectacles ("Perhaps I was negligent").

Stung, Christian Herter soon evened the score. Coldly noting that Gromyko "not only today but on other occasions" had accused NATO and West Germany of planning aggressive war, Herter reminded the conference that "the tensions that have required the Western powers through ordinary prudence to protect themselves" have been "tensions created --and created in many cases deliberately --by the Soviet government." Many more such Soviet charges, he warned, would mean that "our desire to negotiate seriously would be nullified very rapidly."

Mt. Blanc by Moonlight. Even to Gromyko it was clear that all this was not going to get the conference far. "When," he asked Selwyn Lloyd, "are we going to stop all this public talking?" The answer was whenever one side or the other asked for secret sessions--an implied indication that it was ready to make concessions. But France's incisive Maurice Couve de Murville, strongly seconded by Herter, argued that since it was Russia that had instigated the conference by fomenting the Berlin crisis, it was up to the Russians to make the first move.

Seeking a way out of this impasse, the British delegation began to talk hopefully of the usefulness of "villa-hopping"'--informal "social" meetings of the Big Four foreign ministers unencumbered by their German advisers. When Herter invited Couve, Lloyd and Gromyko to dinner (fish, chicken and strawberries), the rumor spread that serious bargaining was about to begin. But guests and host sat uncommunicatively on love seats and agreed on nothing beyond the superb view of Mt. Blanc by moonlight.

Off to Albania. More than this would be required to justify a further trip to the summit. Casting about for a relatively harmless concession, the Russians indicated that they were willing to be somewhat more reasonable about an inspection system to enforce the long-discussed ban on nuclear testing. To France, which is making its own H-bomb and hopes soon to test it, this was no attraction at all.

Minimum price the West was prepared to accept for going on to the summit was at least provisional Russian agreement to respect the present status of West Berlin. There were signs that the Russians might be willing. Fortnight ago Gromyko, in private conversation with Herter, came close to disavowing the May 27 deadline for Western evacuation of Berlin set by Khrushchev last November. And from Moscow last week came a pointed announcement that Nikita himself planned to be away in Albania on deadline day.

But like the movement of a glacier, the progress of the Geneva talks was all but undetectable to the naked eye. If, after Herter, Couve and Lloyd returned from John Foster Dulles' funeral, the conference continued at the same profitless pace, the idea just might occur to everyone that little more could be achieved by talking to the head man himself.

*36 lbs.

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