RIGHTS IN BERLIN

Press, Volume XCVIII, Issue 29008, 24 September 1959, Page 13

RIGHTS IN BERLIN

U.S. Condition

For Summit

NEW YORK, September 22. The Secretary of State, Mr Christian Herter, said today that President Eisenhower would demand in his talks with Mr Khrushchev at the week-end the safeguarding of Western rights in Berlin as a condition for any summit meeting.

Mr Herter noted that the Soviet threat to sign a separate peace with East Germany still hung over the West, with—in the view of the Russians—its destruction of Western rights in Berlin. “That is a threat over us. It was made very specifically by Mr Khrushchev,” Mr Herter said. "That is still a major sticking point in these negotiations, and there is no sense in putting this whole matter up to a summit conference with that particular question still unresolved. I hope that this will be one of the questions discussed at Camp David later this week.” Asked if the United , States would ask Mr Khrushchev to disavow any intent to make a separate treaty with East Germany, Mr Herter said: “We have no objection to the Soviet’s making a treaty, but in the making of that treaty they have to reserve the rights which are ours, which they have no right to give over to East Germany.” He did not think Berlin was as active a crisis as it had been. But as far as reaching a solution of the question was concerned, he did not think any progress had been made since the end of the Geneva Foreign Ministers’ talks. Mr Herter also said he was “a little impatient with those who have merely waved off Mr Khrushchev’s suggestion on the disarmament as propaganda.” It was propaganda, he said, and in its details the Soviet Premier’s statement to the General Assembly on Friday could be looked at with scepticism; but it represented an effort of mankind to reach a solution of one at least of the major problems of the world which was a great threat to peace