PROBLEM OF GERMANY

Press, Volume XCVIII, Issue 28801, 23 January 1959, Page 9

PROBLEM OF GERMANY

West To Set Up Study Group

(N.Z Press Association—Copyright) (Rec. 10 p.n..) WASHINGTON, Jan. 22. Britain, France, the United States and West Germany will set up within two weeks a working group in Washington to consider the German problem and the possibility of East-West negotiations, officials said tonight. The precise level has not yet been reached but officials believed it would consist of ambassadors or other senior diplomats. The group’s first task would be tj consider a reply to the Soviet Note of January 10, which called for a 31-nation conference within two months on a Soviet-proposed German peace treaty.

The West opposes the Soviet plan on the ground that Germany must first be reunified in freedom and that a peace treaty with a divided Germany—or even a loose “confederation" of the two Germanies, as Moscow has proposed—would tend to freeze the position of Germany. The West has, therefore, reaffirmed Its willingness to discuss with the Soviet Union the broad problems of German reunification and European security. . Diplomatic circles in Washington favour the holding of an East-West four-Power Foreign Ministers’ conference in the spring to discuss the German problem. Officials said they hoped such a conference might be held in May, before the May 27 deadline set by the Soviet Union for the handing over of Soviet occupation rights in East Berlin to the East German Communist Government. The new working group will doiibtless have* to tackle in due course the question of possible East-West talks, -officials said. Diplomats in Washington will be watching the twenty-first Soviet Communist Party conference. which is due to open m Moscow next Tuesday, for any sign of Soviet willingness to negotiate with the West on Berlin and German reunification. Some Washington diplomats have expressed the hope that the visit to the United States of the Soviet First Deputy Premier (Mr Mikoyan) and bis talks with United States leaders, might lead to some shift in Soviet policy after he has reported to his colleagues in the Kremlin.