“Disengagement” Plan In Europe Discussed

Press, Volume XCVIII, Issue 28840, 10 March 1959, Page 15

“Disengagement” Plan In Europe Discussed

(N.Z. Press Association—Copyright)

(Rec. 11 p.m.) NEW YORK, March 9. The Western Allies have been discussing the advisability of seeking from the Soviet Union an agreement to “freeze” the present level of forces and armaments in Germany, the “New York Times” correspondent in Bonn reported today. The agreement would cover both conventional and nuclear weapons, the correspondent said. But such an accord had been considered only as part of a wider demand on Germany that would require major counter-concessions from the Soviet Union.

Under such an agreement, a second phase would see both the Soviet and Allied forces in Germany “thinned out,” the correspondent reported. The present outcry in Bonn and Paris against such si scheme might be explained by the fact that so far neither the Foreign Ministers nor the heads of Governments of the Western countries had discussed it The talks had been, confined so far to members of arf Allied working gFoup'ba the German question, which met in Washington last month. Each country had since been working but its own detailed position on the many possible questions that might be taken up with the Soviet Union at any highlevel talks, the “New York Times” said, Dr. Adfinauer and President de Gaulle were thought in Bonn to believe that the Western attitudes on these points should not be disclosed anywhere but at an East-West meeting. They feared that prior discussion in public and by the press weakened the Western. position at the bargaining table. The correspondent said this left the inference that neither Dr. Adenauer or President de Gaulle was as inflexible about the pro-

posals to be made to the Soviet Union as their spokesmen made them sound last weekIt was presumed in Bonn that Mr Macmillan would seek Dr. Adenauer’s support for the study of the possibility of limiting arms and forces in Central Europe. Mr Macmillan is due in Bonn for talks with the German leader on Thursday. But Dr. Adenauer had insisted that even a promise to study such a “disengagement” would Constitute a concession to the Soviet Union, which must not be made except in return for changes in the rigid Soviet attitude, the “New York Times” reported. Many western diplomats in Bonn believed that the talks between Mr Macmillan and Dr. Adenauer would not be enough to meet the situation. They believed these talks should be followed immediately by a conference of Western heads of Government to re-establish unity among the West’s Big Four—Britain, France, Germany and the United States.