REJECTION BY UNITED STATES SAID TO BE CERTAIN

Press, Volume LXXXVI, Issue 26039, 16 February 1950, Page 5

REJECTION BY UNITED STATES SAID TO BE CERTAIN

(N.Z. Pres* Association —Copyright) (Rec. 9 p.m.) LONDON, Feb. 15. “Mr Churchill’s suggestion (made in an election speech at Edinburgh last, night) for another meeting between Mr Stalin and British and American leaders to end the cold war is certain to be quickly rejected by the Truman Administration,” says Reuter’s Washington correspondent. “President Truman and the Secretary of State (Mr Dean Acheson) last week both rejected similar proposals after they had been made in the United States Congress, and after it had been freely predicted in the American press that Mr Churchill would make such a proposal in the election campaign, Mr John Hickerson, an Assistant-Secretary of State, possibly with foreknowledge of Mr Churchill’s speech, made it clear that the United States was willing to discuss international control of atomic energy with the Soviet Union, but within the United Nations.

“Mr Acheson last week theoretically held out the possibility of such attempts as Mr Churchill suggested, but only after the Western Allies, had reached a strength which the Russians could realistically recognise as an existing fact in an agreement.

“Observers in Washington regard the American decision to go ahead with the production of the hydrogen bomb as one of the most vital steps taken to implement Mr Acheson’s policy of ‘agreement through strength.’

“Officials have said frequently that it has been very much more difficult to reach agreement, or even to discuss the possibility of reaching agreement, with the Russians since the Russians developed the atomic bomb. These officials apparently hope that the Soviet Union will be more willing to co-operate realistically in a new agreement as soon as the United States creates a new state of affairs by adding the hydrogen bomb to its armoury.”