Agreement to Talk

Canada's External Affairs Chief Lester Bowles ("Mike") Pearson, in Moscow last week for a good-will visit with top Soviet officials, found time for one item of business: an agreement to start preliminary talks for a new Canadian-Soviet trade treaty. The Moscow press, hailing the latest evidence of the spirit of Geneva at work, announced that Soviet negotiators would leave soon for Ottawa.

Pearson's agreement to talk trade came almost as an afterthought to a week devoted to rounds of parties, sightseeing tours, and long office calls on senior Soviet functionaries. Three of his Russian hosts once cornered Pearson at a Canadian Embassy luncheon and demanded to know why Canada refuses to sell Russia strategic aluminum, copper, and nickel. Pearson smoothly replied that the metals are in short supply. "Where?" demanded ex-Premier Georgy Malenkov. "In Russia," smiled Pearson.

Actually, no foreseeable Canadian-Soviet trade treaty would affect Canada's strategic embargoes, which are set up under agreement with the other NATO powers. And Canada's nonstrategic trade with Russia, never greater than $5,000,000 a year in either direction since 1946, seems unlikely to grow much; the two countries, similar in geography and geology, export many of the same products.

From Moscow, Pearson flew to the Black Sea resort of Mishor for an overnight visit with vacationing Premier Nikolai Bulganin and Communist Party Chief Nikita Khrushchev, who chided him politely for Canada's adherence to NATO. Replied Pearson: "We might agree to leave NATO if you would agree to leave a lot of other things we'd like you to leave." The next day Pearson flew on toward Singapore, where he and other Colombo Plan representatives will try to work out ways to bulwark Southern Asia against the spread of Communism.

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