The Unwelcome Guest

If communications aboard the Russian passenger liner Baltika were any good at all, its top passenger, Nikita Khrushchev, and his assorted satellite satraps last week had something new to chew over. As Baltika cruised toward New York harbor, the U.S. State Department handed a coolly worded memorandum to the Soviets' U.N. delegation, advising the Russians that Khrushchev--who had invited him self to the U.S. to appear before the General Assembly--should not make any plans to leave the island of Manhattan, and should find some place to house himself as close to the U.N. headquarters as possible.

"The question of assuring the necessary security for Mr. Khrushchev and the Soviet delegation has, of course," said the memo, "been complicated by the hostile public statements of the head of the Soviet government and by the destruction of an American plane over international waters by Soviet action and the continued illegal detention of two American flyers.'' In short, not only would Khrushchev probably have to forgo visiting the Soviet Union's mansion in nearby Glen Cove.

L.I.. among other places, but he was being reminded bluntly that he and his cronies--among whom the most offensive is Hungary's notorious Party Boss Janos Kadar--were about as welcome in the U.S. as the Black Plague.

Oddly enough, in the no man's land on the East River that is U.N. territory, Khrushchev this time might find himself not much more welcome. He would cry peace and disarmament, but has shown that he has about as much interest in reducing tensions and promoting world order as the Three Stooges. Dag Hammarskjold and Russia's fellow Security Council members, bent on quieting the Congo turmoil, had watched the Soviets stir the fires of chaos, make a grandstand play to Africans by labeling the U.N. a partner to a colonial conspiracy, and egg on the wild Lumumba (see FOREIGN NEWS).

There were many who feared the propaganda impact Khrushchev, accusing the U.S. of espionage and aggression, might have in New York. He would certainly make a lot of noise. But in the places around the world where peace was being jeopardized, it was the Russians who were making the mischief. The reputation of the U.N. itself was at issue in the Congo, and it was the Russians who were doing most to queer the act. In this tough moment for the U.N., the U.S. rallied to Hammarskjold's side.

"The United States," said President Eisenhower, "deplores the unilateral action of the Soviet Union in supplying aircraft and other equipment for military purposes to the Congo . . . The United States takes a most serious view of this action by the Soviet Union ... I urge the Soviet Union to desist. The United States in tends to give its support [to whatever action] the United Nations finds necessary within the limits of its charter to keep peace in this region."

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