SUMMIT TALKS PROPOSAL

Press, Volume XCVII, Issue 28527, 5 March 1958, Page 11

SUMMIT TALKS PROPOSAL

N.A.T.O. Considers Soviet Terms (N.Z. Press Association-Copyright) (Rec. 9 p.m.) PARIS, March 4. The Permanent Council of N.A.T.O. will meet today to consider Russia’s terms for a r oreign Ministers’ conference preparatory to summit talks. The meeting, one of a series being held on the preparation of a possible summit conference, is ■* the ’ UTO '”' ta " * French diplomats consider a meeting for Foreign Ministers this northern spring—probably in Geneva —to be a foregone conclusion. They do not share the same certainty about summit talks.

Russia said in her week-end letter to France that a Foreign Ministers’ Conference should be given the “limited task” of preparing an agenda and determining the composition of East-West summit talks, it was announced today.

The letter said that, in accepting the idea of a Foreign Ministers’ Conference the Soviet Government believed that a firm agreement on the date for summit talks should be reached before the Foreign Ministers met. The Soviet Government proposed that the Foreign Ministers should meet in Geneva next April and the heads of Government in June.

The Soviet news agency, Tass, tonight issued a summary of a letter from the Soviet Foreign Minister, Mr Andrei Gromyko, delivered to the French Foreign Minister, Mr Christian Pineau. Mr Gromyko said he noted that the French Government agreed that there should be parity both at the Foreign Ministers’ and summit conferences.

This meant, he said, that the West should be represented by France, the United States, Britain and Italy, and the East by the Soviet Union, Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Rumania. Agreement remained to be reached on the participation additionally of some uncommitted countries mentioned in the Soviet proposal of January 8, he said. The letter represents a change of attitude by Russia in the question of a Foreign Ministers’ Conference, which it originally opposed. “The Soviet Government considered it possible to agree that, parallel with talks through diplomatic channels, a Foreign Ministers’ Conference be convened in the nearest future with a limited task of preparing an agenda and determining the composition of the summit conference,” he said. The letter proposed that the summit conference discussed problems which gave some hope of reaching an agreement.

The establishment of an atom free zone in Central Europe and the termination of nuclear weapon tests was one problem. Mr Gromyko rejected Mr Pineau’s proposal to discuss the atom-free plant, together with that of reunification, the letter said.

German reunification was first and foremost the concern of the Germans themselves and was not connected with the creation of an atom-free zone.