CONFERENCE OF BIG FOUR

Press, Volume XCI, Issue 27695, 27 June 1955, Page 11

CONFERENCE OF BIG FOUR

Optimism Felt In West (N.Z. Press Association—Copyright) (Rec. 10 p.m.) SAN FRANCISCO, June 25. The Soviet and Western Foreign Ministers appeared to be more than politely pleased with the success of their efforts to agree on the ground rules for next month’s Big Four conference in Geneva, Reuter’s diplomatic correspondent said today. The correspondent quoted one Western diplomat as saying: “We have succeeded in reaching in San Francisco the stage which we had originally hoped to reach at the end of the first day at Geneva.” It took Mr Molotov only a f.ew hours to agree to a plan to which the Western Powers had devoted weeks of careful preparation in the hope of making it procedurally impossible for the Soviet representatives at Geneva to turn the conference into a world propaganda battle. The genial alacrity with which Mr Molotov accepted the Western proposals and his apparently sincere desire to open East-West negotiations as quickly as possible, the correspondent said, left the representatives of the Western Powers differing only in the degree of optimism with which they contemplate/ the opening of the Geneva conference.

The British appeared to be the most optimistic about the chances of business-like and constructive discussions at Geneva. But even they emphasised that this optimism extended only to the nature and not necessarily to the outcome of Geneva. United States diplomats took the view that there was a fifty-fifty chance of the Soviets refraining from a propaganda battle and negotiating constructively. But they emphasised that there was still a vast and fundamental gap between the Soviet and Western positions on both the problems to be discussed at Geneva, as well as the means of solving them. The correspondent said that both sides now were agreed on the necessity for discussing the reduction and control of all armaments and a system of security for both Communist and ndn-Communist Europe. The Soviet Union wished to discuss —and the United States opposed it—the removal' of United States troops from foreign bases. The United States wished to discuss, and the Soviet Union opposed discussing, the activities of international communism and the Soviet domination of Eastern Europe. In obvious deference to their Asian ally, the Soviet Government had asked that Far Eastern questions be discussed, including Communist China’s claim to Formosa and a seat in the United Nations. But Mr Molotov had not pressed this point at San Francisco, and Mr Dulles had not pressed strongly his opposition to discussing Far Eastern questions at Geneva. ' But no-one in a responsible position in San Francisco at present expected even the Geneva conference to result in any specific Big Four agreement on any major world problem, the correspondent said.

The most that was exoected was that Geneva would formally launch a series of groups which would have to negotiate for • months, perhaps years, before agreements would be reached towards ending a cold war which had lasted as long as World War II itself. “Cold War Battle” John Hightower, diplomatic correspondent of the American Associated Press, took a gloomier view of the situation. “The Big Four summit meeting,” he said, “is threatening to become more of a cold war battle than a peace conference.” Prospects for the conference were thrown into much sharper focus at the United Nations anniversary ceremonies. It now appeared, the correspondent added, that while there might be some minor adjustments in relations between the Soviets and the Western Powers, the great issues were so deadlocked that little progress toward their solution was to be expected. On the contrary, what seemed to be going on now was a testing of strength between the two sides, each probing for weaknesses which could be exploited to force the other to pull back. The judgment of the best-informed authorities was that neither side had an enprmous “edge” over the other, so the result of Geneva might be to confirm the existence of a stalemate. Diplomats said that this would not necessarily mean further immediate trouble for the world, however, because a condition of balance between the Communist bloc and the free world could very well produce a period of stability in world affairs.