The Breakoff

"They reached complete agreement that each item should be dealt with on a separate piece of paper. They did not agree on anything else."

Thus did Andrew Berding, U.S. State Department briefing officer, thumbnail last week the immobility and futility of the Big Four sessions at Geneva. Secretary of State Christian Herter confided to aides that he felt "degraded" by having to sit and listen to Andrei Gromyko's laboriously unyielding speeches. At last came the point when, over coffee in the U.S. villa, Herter told Gromyko that he was leaving Geneva in a week--to attend a meeting of the Organization of American States in Santiago, Chile--come what might.

Would Gromyko agree to the conference's continuing without Herter, on deputy levels? "I do not like the idea," said Gromyko. What, continued Herter, did Gromyko suggest? "Let's keep talking and try to find a solution by Wednesday."

And so began a new flurry of sessions, including some bearing the repellent name of "working teas." Inevitably Gromyko sidled up to Herter and privately suggested giving ground a little here or there, to keep the talk going. The West Germans, alarmed at the possibility of last-minute "ill-considered concessions," sent a hurry-up call for West Berlin's Socialist Mayor Willy Brandt to appear at Geneva. They need not have worried. The last days were spent in,exchange of poles-apart position papers, in discussing how to counter specious last-minute Soviet offers in deciding whether to recess or to break oo:. After nine tedious weeks, Geneva was ending not with a bang, not with a whimper, but merely in a blur.

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