ATTITUDE OF U.S.

Press, Volume XCVII, Issue 28528, 6 March 1958, Page 11

ATTITUDE OF U.S.

“Russian Offer Unacceptable” (Rec. 8.30 p.m.) WASHINGTON, March 4. The Secretary of State, Mr Dulles, said today the Soviet Union’s proposal for a pre-summit Foreign Ministers’ meeting was unacceptable on the terms the Russians laid down. Mr Dulles told a press conference that the United States was in favour of a summit meeting and wanted preparations for it that would lead to substantial achievements for peace. But the United States, he said, wanted no part of any fraud or hoax which would merely fool people. Mr Dulles’s press conference was taken up almost exclusively with the Soviet drive for a summit conference and the United States reaction. He denied that the Russians had put the United States “in a box,” as one questioner suggested. Mr Dulles repeatedly emphasised that the Soviet proposal would prevent the very kind of meeting which the United States wanted to have. This would define, and go far to work out agreement on, the issues which would be finally dealt with at a summit conference. Old-fashioned diplomacy was a good way to go about easing international tensions and a heads-of-government meeting was not indispensable, Mr Dulles said. Mr Dulles said the great danger in the present East-West debate over a summit meeting was that Russia wanted to substitute the fiction that the cold war had ended for the reality of the cold war. He said that at present he knew of no major issues which in the light of known Soviet and Western positions offered any likelihood of agreement at a summit conference. However, this did not mean that prospects were hopeless because some possibilities of agreement might be opened up by careful and substantial work in advance of a summit meeting. He described the United States position in approaching East-West talks as “flexible.**