Western Concern At Soviet Policy

Press, Volume XCIX, Issue 29262, 21 July 1960, Page 13

Western Concern At Soviet Policy

(Rec. 9 p.m.) NEW YORK, July 19. President Eisenhower called the Secretary, of State, Mr Christian Herter, and other top advisers into conference today to discuss Russia’s hostility to the United States and in Britain the Prime Minister, Mr Macmillan, announced that he had sent a personal letter to Mr Khrushchev in a bid to “stop the rot” in relations between Russia and the West.

Accompanying Mr Herter on a flight from Washington to Newport, where the President is on holiday, was Mr Charles E. Bohlen, a former Ambassador to Moscow and now a State Department specialist on Soviet affairs. Others included the Assistant Secretary of State for European Afiairs, Mr Roy Kohler, and the assistant secretary in charge of United Nations matters. Mr Francis Wilcox.

The talks were aimed at coping with the wave of Soviet actions, threats and propaganda that has marked Kremlin policy since the collapse of the Paris summit conference last May. In the House of Commons, Mr Macmillan took the unprecedented step of his reading aloud his letter to Mr Khrushchev. He said his motive in doing so was to let the world know his version of recent international incidents —the shooting down of the RB-47 American reconnaissance plane, the breakdown of the disarmament talks and Soviet allegations of a Western conspiracy in the Congo. He told the Soviet leader he was deeply concerned over the new trend of Russian foreign policy and said: “I simply do not understand what your purpose is today. If the present trend continues miscalculation or mischance might bring about a situation from which there will be no escape.’’ He dismissed the Russian allegation that the plane was over Soviet territory, and said Britain "views with the utmost seriousness this unprovoked attack, which illustrates the danger implicit in the present instructions to the Soviet armed forces.’’

The Soviet Government bore a heavy responsibility for the action of the pilot who shot down the plane in international air space. On the summit conference, Mr Macmillan said: “I still feel that it would have been better had you been willing to put other difficulties aside in order to pursue the major purpose for which we were to meet. All acts of intelligence or espionage, on either side are, after all, symptoms, not causes, of the world tension which we should both seek to reduce.”

•He expressed regret at the Soviet action which brought the disarmament talks to an end—“in my view prematurely." On Russian accusations that Britain, with America, Belgium, France and W’est Germany, was organising a conspiracy to destroy the Congo, Mr Macmillan wrote: “I must ask you, Mr Khrushchev, whether you really believe such a conspiracy is likely in view of the policies which British Governments of all parties have followed,

not only since the last war but for many generations.”

British newspapers welcomed Mr Mactnillan’s message and expressed concern about the recent deterioration of relations between East and West.

The “Guardian” said: “The Prime Minister’s personal letter to Mr Khrushchev is sensible, restrained, and to the point. It comes as a temperate air after many chill winds. It was well worth sending, even if it may not have much effect in Moscow.” “The Times” said that Mr Macmillan’s sentence: "I simply do not understand what your purpose is today,” showed to an alarming degree how far the Western and Eastern governments had been pushed apart in recent months.

“The danger is that in the next few months, something may be said or done, by Mr Khrushchev or by someone else, that is irretrievable. The atmosphere cannot stand many more electric charges without' peril.”