Kennedy For Europe

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30035, 21 January 1963, Page 11

Kennedy For Europe

(N.Z. Press Assn.-Copyright) WASHINGTON, Jan. 20. President Kennedy’s main immediate objective in visiting Europe this year is to prevent President de Gaulle, of France, from permanently rupturing the Atlantic Alliance, according to the Associated Press. The agency said the allian e would be broken if the French leader succeeded in forming a kind of FrenchGerman alliance within NATO.

Mr Kennedy’s decision to visit West Germany and Italy this year appeared to be a carefully-calculated move in the power struggle over the future of Europe.

The White House announced yesterday that President Kennedy is to visit West Germany and Italy later this year, but does not intend going anywhere else in Europe during the trip. May or June is a likely date for the President’s tour.

The White House press secretary, Mr Pierre Salinger, said the President would pay a state visit to Italy, but the trip to Bonn afterward would be Mi informal working visit. Mrs Kennedy is to accompany the President to Italy.

Key Figure The Associated Press said the Wert German Chancellor, Dr. Konrad Adenauer, is a key figure, because his own feelings on some issues are close to. if not identical with, those of General de Gaulle. But on Others be is very close to the United States.

Genera] de Gaulle’s obvious aim was to form a binding association between France and West Germany around which the rest of non-Com-munirt Europe, excluding Britain, would cluster to a system which Erance could dominate.

Foe that policy. France re-

quired its own nuclear striking power, however inferior tn the Soviet and American power that might be.

General de Gaulle wants to establish the basis of his European structure when he meets Dr. Adenauer over the next few days, the correspondent said. His purpose became crystal clear in his news conference last Monday when he torpedoed the long and almost successful negotiations tar British membership in the European Common Market.

General de Gaulle made no secret of the fact in private conversations in Paris last week that he felt he had reached a kind of now-or-never point. He seemed convinced that if Dr. Adenauer would make a firm pact with him. West Germany could

accept the commitment and it would become enduring German policy, effective long after Dr. Adenauer steppea aside.

For its part, the Kennedy Administration had decided that, apart from limited applications of influence and argument, there was little that could be done now from Washington. But Washington officials were keeping their eyes on the fact that General de Gaulle was an ageing leader and his stand on the future shape of Europe was not universally supported by the other leaders of bis own country.

They felt the unifying of the British and European economies and the centralising of nuclear power eventually would come about.