SUMMIT “THE EARLIER THE BETTER”

Press, Volume XCVIII, Issue 29068, 3 December 1959, Page 17

SUMMIT “THE EARLIER THE BETTER”

Khrushchev Denies Russia Is Dragging Feet Press Association—Copynght) (Rec. 10 pjm.) BUDAPEST, December 2. The Soviet Prime Minister, Mr Khrushchev, today reaffirmed the Soviet Union’s desire for an early summit, “the earlier the better.”

Denying foreign reports that the Soviet was now dragging her ’ feet on this issue, he said: “We want this meeting, but we also want it to be fruitful and beneficial for the peoples. “The Soviet Government is ready to have this meeting at any time or place acceptable to all parties,” he said.

Speaking to the. Hungarian Communists’ first congress since the 1956 uprising, Mr Khrushchev revived his call for a peace treaty with Germany and said that if this were not achieved, the Soviet Union would sign a unilateral treaty with East Germany. This seventh congress of the Hungarian Socialist Workers’ (Communist) Party is being held in the great hall of the Building Workers’ House of Culture, not far from the site of the huge statue of Stalin which was toppled during the rising. Mr Khrushchev made these

points in his speech; Germany: West Berlin was “an apple of discord,” and on this the West German Chancellor, Dr. Adenauer, was particularly active, although he had “no grounds at all for interfering in the affairs of that city." Summit Prospects: In international political life, the temperature was definitely rising. He had a useful meeting with the British Prime Minister (Mr Macmillan) in the spring, which made “something of a start on the warming of the international atmosphere." More recently, his meeting with President Eisenhower “took place in the warm days of the American autumn, and I should say that the talks were also warm. “A summit meeting could be held earlier than my trip (March 15) to France, but General de Gaulle wants to exchange views with me before the Heads of Government meet. Every pos-

sibility should be explored for the solution of disputed questions.” Disarmament: The Soviet Union had now stockpiled such a quantity of rockets, atomic and hydrogen warheads, that “if attacked, we shall be able to raze to the ground all pitr potential enemies. “It is not because of our weakness, but because of our principled Leninist policy of peaceful coexistence that we are ready

to destroy immediately all these stockpiles if a programme of universal disarmament is adopted.” Hungary: Referring to the 1956 “counter-revolution," Mr Khrushchev said if it did succeed in causing disturbances this was due to the fact that the former leadership of the Hungarian Workers’ Party had committed serious mistakes which underlined the party’s directing role, and weakened the dictatorship of the proletariat. “The historic merit of the Hungarian Socialist Workers’ Party and its leadership is above all that they boldly took to the road of resolutely correcting the mistakes committed by the old leadership," Mr Khrushchev said.

“In difficult conditions caused by the counter-revolutionary uprising, they persistently and consistently applied the Leninist methods of leadership and managed to restore the trust in the

party undermined by the old leadership," he said. The Personality Cult: “Following the twentieth congress of the Soviet Communist Party, certain difficulties, something of a fever, were experienced by some parties, including our party.. But everything depends on the strength of the organism, on its resistance to disease. “The Communist Party of the Soviet Union was the first to give an example of boldly and sharply denouncing the mistakes produced by the cult of personality. And it was right, even though some people have said that certain complications in the public life of the Socialist countries stem from the twentieth

congress of our party and that the question should not have been raised so sharply. It had to be done. It was necessary to get cleansed and to throw off all the accumulated extraneous matter." All parties had gone through this fever in various degrees, but “our organism has become even stronger afterwards and we fallow with greater confidence the road indicated by Marx, Engels, and Lenin, the road to a Communist society,” he said.