44Sharp Difference Of Opinion'’

Press, Volume XCIX, Issue 29165, 28 March 1960, Page 13

44 Sharp Difference Of Opinion'’

(Special Correspondent Ng P.A.) (Rec. 8 p.m.) LONDON, March 26. In spite of the official Whitehall attitude that the meeting between Mr Macmillan and President Eisenhower is “nothing more than a normal process of consultation between allies who value each other’s counsel” and that the Foreign Office and State Department are not at loggerheads, nobody doubts that something in the nature of a sharp difference of opinion has occurred in the British-American attitude to the Geneva nuclear test ban negotiations.

These differences are being expressed far more bluntly in American reports than in British and they extend even to whether President Eisenhower invited Mr Macmillan to Washington or whether Mr Macmillan proposed the meeting. The position has been summed up this way: The Americans proposed to ban all nuclear tests which could be brought into an effective agreed control system. Small underground tests which cpuld not be detected by that system would remain permissable until it became possible to detect them. Meanwhile there would be a joint research aimed at controlling these small underground explosions. The Russians countered this by

offering to accept the United States proposal for a phased ban and joint research on condition that it was linked with the plan for a moratorium on small tests while research was being carried out. This would mean that nuclear Powers would have to rely on each other’s pledged word not to conduct small tests during the period they remained undetectable.

In other words it becomes a question of the belief which the Western Powers can repose in Soviet good faith and vice versa.

Reports from Washington men(ion hesitation and scepticism in the American Administration. At best, the Russian counter move is seen as a potentionally worthwhile advance; at worst as a mere exercise in propaganda. Mr Macmillan is said to favour acceptance of the Russian proposals, at least as a basis for further discussion. The State Department is said also to be impressed by the Soviet gesture, but the military chiefs of the Pentagon and the United States Atomic Energy Commission are anxious tr hold underground tests for defence reasons. Both the President and Mr Macmillan have “complications”— President Eisenhower that the Americans do not seem disposed in an election year to back anything that smacks of doing a deal with the Russians; Mr Macmillan that the success or failure of the summit talks in May, for which he has worked for over a year, could depend on a settlement of British-American differences over the present dispute. There are various reports about how the Washington meeting was arranged. One says Mr Macmillan telephoned President Eisenhower, with whom he is known always to be in close contact, last Monday, urging conditional acceptance of the Soviet proposals. President Eisenhower did not feel ready to give a definite answer and when Mr Macmillan telephoned again on Tuesday the President suggested personal talks in Washington.

Mr Macmillan is accompanied by Sir Norman Brook, secretary of the Cabinet, Sir William Penney, member for scientific research of the Atomic Energy Authority, Mr C. D. W. O’Neill, an assistant under-secretary at the Foreign Office, who has responsibility for problems of nuclear disarmament, and Mr Philip de Zulueta, one of the Prime Miniter's private secretaries.

The composition of the British party, the probable shortness of the talks and the firm assurances given in London that no other matters will be raised, at least by the British, all evidently are intended to dispel any suspicion in France, Germany or elsewhere that this might be a BritishAmerican preparation for the summit conference.