FOUR POWER TALKS

Press, Volume LXXXVII, Issue 26362, 5 March 1951, Page 7

FOUR POWER TALKS

Delegates Arrive At Paris

(Rec. 8.20 pm.) PARIS, March 3. Delegates are now arriving in Paris for the Four Power talks which will decide whether the Big Four Foreign Ministers will meet again. The chief western representatives will meet to-morrow to form the Western attitude.

French diplomatic quarters expect the Deputies’ Conference to agree on the agenda. They considered that the conference should not last more than 10 or 15 days. Seasoned observers in Moscow felt that the Soviet delegation was prepared to go a long way to meet the Western proposals for the agenda. They felt that Russia might open negotiations, looking toward an eventual Five Power conference, including Communist China, with the object of ending the Korean war and reaching a wide Far East settlement Mr Philip Jessup, the American Am-bassador-at-large, said to-day that the United States was entering the Big Four talks in a highly sceptical frame of mind as to what the Russians would do. Mr Jessup, who will head the American delegation, spoke after a conference with President Truman. “We have to approach the meeting on the basis that we are ‘from Missouri.* We want to see if they are ready to demonstrate that they will get down to brass tacks and talk about the things that really are causing all the tension,” he said. Mr Jessup made it clear that the United States will seek evidence of any change in the Soviet Union’s attitude,

but he added: “We are not going to be taken in by mere words that do not mean performance.” The United States was not worried over the prospects of a propaganda battle with the Russians. The Associated Press says that Mr Jessup’s words reflected the State Department’s tendency to discount heavily any chance that the preliminary negotiations in Paris , would lead to real peace talks between the Soviet Union and the Western Powers.