U.S. REPLIES TO KHRUSHCHEV

Press, Volume XCVIII, Issue 28825, 20 February 1959, Page 11

U.S. REPLIES TO KHRUSHCHEV

“West Not Shooting Way Into Berlin” (N-Z. Press Association—Copyright) (Rec. 10 pan.) ' WASHINGTON, February 18. President Eisenhower said to-day that if any shooting erupts over Berlin, it will be started by the Russians trying to “stop us from doing our duty.” “We are not saying that we are going to shoot our way into Berlin,” the President told his news conference. But he said the West was determined to carry out its responsibilities under the 1945 Big Four Agreements, which gave the Western Powers control over part of Berlin and guaranteed them access to the city through Communist East Germany,

If we are stopped,” the President said, “it will be somebody else using force.” The President made the statements in response to a question about Mr Khrushchev’s latest speech in which he warned that if the West opens fire over access to Berlin “this will mean the beginning of war.” Mr Eisenhower said Mr Khrushchev ‘must be talking about shooting to stop us , from doing out duty.”

Mr Khrushchev ruled out any possibility that Russia would stand by in the face of a second Berlin airlift. He said any “violation” of East German territory would be "resolutely rebuffed . . whether this violation be on water, on land or in the air.” Mr Eisenhower said he had read only a "most abbreviated” version of Mr Khrushchev’s speech. But he said the West will carry out its responsibilities “and it will be the other side if there is going to be any force.” In response to a question on proposed troop cuts by both sides in Germany, he said the West has shown “time and again” its readiness to negotiate on German problems. “We don’t want, and we realise it would be self-defeating, to build up anything that the Soviets could legitimately consider a menace on their border, and we don’t want to do that,” he said. “The West is searching for a lust peace and until that comes about, I think we have to do the best we can, stay strong, but always hold out a hand ready to be grasped if it will be grasped in good faith.” The Assistant Democratic leader in the Senate, Senator Mike Mansfield, said today that the West would not be swayed from its determination to remain in West Berlin in the face of “threats or blandishments” by Mr

Senator Mansfield said he was referring to Mr Khrushchev's statement that if the West tried to shoot their way to West Berlin after the Soviet Union handed over occupation duties to East Germany “this will mean the beginning of war.”