HUMPHREY ON TOUR

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31329, 28 March 1967, Page 13

HUMPHREY ON TOUR

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter —Copyright) GENEVA, Mar. 27. The Vice - President of the United States, Mr Hubert Humphrey, arrived in Geneva early today from Washington at the start of a seven-nation tour to fan some new warmth into United States relations with Western Europe and discuss common problems. After stepping from his special air force plane at Geneva airport, Mr Humphrey said the purpose of his twoweek tour was “to learn and to listen.” He hoped it would be a fruitful and productive mission for all parties. The Vice-President, accompanied by his wife on what is his first European tour since his election two years ago, will call on President de Gaulle, the British Prime Minister, Mr Harold Wilson, and the West German Chancellor, Dr. Kurt Georg Kiesinger. “Too Absorbed” The trip is partly designed to dispel a widely-held belief in some parts of Europe that President Johnson is too absorbed with Vietnam to pay full attention to other major questions. Observers in Washington also say the United States Government wants to quell fears that a growing identity of interest between the United States and the Soviet

Union will be at the expense of the European nations. Two important international negotiations now going on in Geneva will be major subjects of Mr Humphrey’s short stay. These are the 17-nation disarmament conference dealing with a proposed treaty to ban the spread of nuclear weapons and the Kennedy round bargaining aimed at lowering world-wide trade barriers. Into Recess Mr Humphrey will discuss these later today whep he meets the United States arms negotiator, Mr William Foster, and Mr W. Michael Blumenthal, who heads the American team in the Kennedy round. The disarmament conference went into a six-week recess at American request last week to allow the United

States more time for consultations with its N.A.T.O. allies over the proposed treaty. Dissension among the Western Allies, mainly over the question of international safeguards on the peaceful nuclear activities of countries not possessing atomic weapons, has been holding up tabling of the draft treaty. The Kennedy round talks are entering their final and decisive month after some four years of preparations and preliminary bargaining among 50 countries. Negotiations are to be wound up by April 30. The Vice-President will leave Geneva tomorrow morning for The Hague and will later visit Bonn, Rome, London, Berlin, Paris and Brussels before returning to Washington on April 9.