WEST PREPARES FOR SUMMIT

Press, Volume XCVIII, Issue 29067, 2 December 1959, Page 17

WEST PREPARES FOR SUMMIT

Talks In London And Paris (NJt. Press Association—Copyright! (Rec. 11 pjn.) LONDON, December 1. A wide range of European problems will be raised in two top-level sets of talks opening today in Paris and London. * The .West German Chancellor, Dr. Konrad Adenauer, will be welcomed by the French Prime Minister, Mr Michel Debre, when he lands at Orly airport, near Paris, from Bonn for two days of talks with President de Gaulle.

Their main topics are expected to be the Western summit conference opening in Paris on December 19 and the later East-West summit meeting, the date of which has not yet been fixed. The talks are expected to produce 'complete agreement on basic issues, particularly Berlin and preparations for an East-West summit meeting, well-informed sources to Bonn said yesterday. Both Dr. Adenauer and General de Gaulle oppose separate discussion of the Berlin problem and favour a general agenda for summit talks, the sources added. Dr. Adenauer will be accompanied by his Foreign Minister. Mr Heinrich von Brentono. About the same time that Dr. Adenauer arrives in Paris, the Italian Prime Minister, Mr Antonia Segni, and his Foreign Minister, Mr Giuseppe Pella, will be leaving for London. They are to have two days of talks with the British Prime Minister (Mr Macmillan) and his Foreign Secretary (Mr Selwyn Lloyd).

Mr Segni arrived in Paris yesterday to pick up Mr Pella, who had earlier addressed the current session of the Western European Assembly Union on the need for European co-operation. Ways of strengthening co-opera-tion and preventing a two-way division of the area are some of the main points to be raised in today’s talks in London. Well-informed sources In Paris said both countries were anxious to prevent a weakening of political co-operation within the 15nation North Atlantic Pact as a result of the emergence of two economic blocs in northern Europe—the six-nation Common Market, of which Italy is a member. and the “outer seven” free trade area formed to Stockholm last month under British leadership. Both are said to be keen to examine the possibility that the Western European Union on which both are members, might be used to reactivate European unity. Other questions expected to be discussed on the London visit will be disarmament, the German question, European security, the Middle East and aid to underdeveloped areas.