EXCHANGE OF VISITS

Press, Volume XCVII, Issue 28531, 10 March 1958, Page 9

EXCHANGE OF VISITS

Acceptance By Bulganin <Rec. 7 p.m.) WASHINGTON, Mar. 7. The latest letter of the Soviet Prime Minister, Marshal Bulganin, to President Eisenhower failed to advance prospects for an EastWest summit conference, United States officials said today. Officials said that the only encouraging note in the letter was on a non-summit issue.

Marshal Bulganin accepted the President’s proposal made on February 15 for the exchange of “leaders of thought and influential citizens’’ by the two countries.

There has been speculation that this proposal might lead to a Mos* cow visit by the Vice-President, Mr Nixon, and visits to the United States by important Soviet officials. The Soviet Prime Minister, Marshal Bulganin, in a new letter to the President, published in Moscow tonight, has accused the United States of continuing to propose “obviously unacceptable’’ questions for the agenda of a summit conference. He listed points which Russia was prepared to discuss, including a prohibition on the use of cosmic space for military purposes. In London, the immediate significance of this letter, according to diplomatic observers, was that it showed a sharp clash of view between Washington and Moscow on the form and preparation of an agenda for top-level talks. The Soviet Prime Minister’s point about the prohibition on cosmic space—first suggested by the West —was linked in the letter with the abolition of military bases on foreign territory. But the link is not elaborated.