NO PROGRESS AT GENEVA

Press, Volume XCVIII, Issue 28963, 3 August 1959, Page 11

NO PROGRESS AT GENEVA

Talks To End This Week

(Rec. 11 p.m.) GENEVA, August 2. Mr Christian Herter and Mr Andrei Gromyko, the American and Soviet Foreign Ministers, talked for nearly four hours over lunch yesterday, but made no progress.

American officials said the two Ministers talked “over and over and round and round" the question of what would happen at the end of any East-West interim agreement on Berlin. A United States spokesman summed up the meeting at the Soviet villa by saying: “No progress was recorded.” A Soviet spokesmaan told reporters earlier: “There are no grounds for pessimism.” but he was later quoted by Communist correspondents as agreeing that there was no progress. Observers had regarded the meeting—the longest of its kind since the talks began on May 11 —as critical for the success or faiiure of the conference, now drawing near its Wednesday deadline. Mr Herter is due to leave Geneva next Thursday “with or without agreement,” according to an American spokesman. No meetings are scheduled for today, but Mr Gromyko has invited the British Foreign Secretary. Mr Selwyn Lloyd, to lunch on Monday. It will be preceded by regular consultations among the Western Ministers.

The governing Mayor of West Berlin. Mr Willy Brandt, who has sperpt two dayp conferring with Western Ministers, said before flying back to Berlin yesterday he was “quite confident” about the 'Berlin position. Unilateral Soviet action was “improbable” even if the talks failed, he said. He believed a new phase of the conference would begin soon. a