N.A.T.O. Meeting Opens

Press, Volume CV, Issue 31061, 17 May 1966, Page 17

N.A.T.O. Meeting Opens

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter— Copyright) WASHINGTON, May 16.

The future of N.A.T.O. after France leaves the present military partnership will top the agenda for the two days of talks which th e British Minister for European and N.A.T.O. Affairs, Mr George Thomson, will open in Washington today with the United States Government.

Mr Thomson arrived from London last night and is due to confer with the Secretary of State, Mr Dean Rusk, and the under-secretary, Mr George Ball, as well as with a former Secretary of State and now special N.A.T.O. consultant to the United States Government, Mr Dean Acheson.

Topics to be reviewed Include the fundamental issue of the status of French forces in Germany after France pulls out of the N.A.T.O. command structure, the future home of the N.A.T.O. council and military command if it decided to take the present headquarters out of Paris, and the outlook for British membership in the European Common Market. Mr Thomson will fly to Ottawa tomorrow night for talks there with Canadian Government officials on the same issues before returning to London on Thursday. The talks in Washington and in Canada follow visits by Mr Thomson to most other N.A.T.O. capitals, including Paris, in the last three weeks. The United States Administration hopes that the talks will provide a first-hand account on European thinking about the problem raised by President de Gaulle’s withdrawal from N.A.T.O.

Britain is making the running in the intensive round of inter-governmental talks on the approach the other 14 member N.A.T.O. nations

should take to the withdrawal. France has intimated that even though she wants to cut the military ties, she wants to remain politically in the Atlantic alliance. But Britain believes that, regardless of this wish, the N.A.T.O. council headquarters, on which France will presumably continue to sit, should be moved away from Paris.

Brussels has been prominently mentioned as a possible new home for the council and the military command structure. Britain thinks that the council should be located near the military headquarters and that therefore it should be moved away from Paris.

Washington officials said that Britain was not canvassing London as the new headquarters of the N.A.T.O. council, but if the other 13 were unanimously in favour of it. the United States Government would agree. The United States has not yet taken’ any definite position on this issue, and other N.A.T.O. members are report-

ed to be reluctant to move the N.A.T.O. headquarters from Paris at present. Mr Thomson comes to the Washington talks almost directly from the meeting in Bergen, Norway, of the sevennation European Free Trade Association of which Britain is the leading member.