SUMMIT TALKS LETTER

Press, Volume XCVII, Issue 28514, 18 February 1958, Page 13

SUMMIT TALKS LETTER

U.S. Answer To Bulganin

(Rec. 8 p.m.) WASHINGTON, Feb. 16.

President Eisenhower is expected to call on the Soviet Union this week to clarify through diplomatic channels what it is prepared to discuss at a summit conference.

United States officials said that a letter from the President to Marshal Bulganin, the Soviet Prime Minister, would probably be delivered in Moscow tomorrow.

A Reuter diplomatic correspondent said the President would probably inform the Soviet Prime Minister that' the United States does not regard a Foreign Ministers’ conference as a prior essential to a possible summit meeting. The latest communication from the Soviet Prime Minister a few weeks ago had expressed opposition to • a Foreign Ministers’ meeting.

But Mr Dulles, the United States Secretary of State, ennounced publicly last week that such a gathering was not a necessary prelude to e heeds of Government conference.' although, he said, the United States still would insist on adequate preparations to ensure that a summit meeting would produce positive results. The Soviet Prime Minister hed previously intimated a willingness to talk about an agenda through regular diplomatic exchangee. The Reuter correspondent seid the President may suggest that steps be taken at once to try to find agreement through such channels and to dispense with further public letter writing. In the President’s view, the correspondent said, the long series of letters, initiated by Marshal Bulganin last December, had not helped to bring a summit meeting any closer, nor had it helped United States-Soviet relations.

In fact, Administration officials regarded the letter writing as a propaganda exercise on the part of the Soviet Union. If the Soviet Union wants a summit meeting to ease tensions, then the United States Government, according to officials, believes the Soviet leaders should agree to preparatory negotiations in private through the respective Ambassadors in Moscow and Washington.

Poet’s Death.—Hugh Raymond McCrae, the Australian poet end essayist, died early today at his home in Wahroonga, Sydney. Born in Hawthorn, Victoria, in 1876, the son of poet George Gordon McCrae, Hugh McCrae also worked as a dramatic critic, magazine editor, cartoonist and actor.—Sydney, February 17.