Talking Talk

Amid the angry East-West din over Berlin, talk of negotiation was suddenly breaking out everywhere. "We are prepared for negotiations," insisted Nikita Khrushchev. The U.S. is "ready to discuss any proposal" to protect Berlin's rights, said President Kennedy. In London, Prime Minister Harold Macmillan came out in favor of "reasonable negotiation," was pushing hard behind the scenes for foreign ministers' talks some time in the fall.

Matter of Rights. What the two sides would talk about was not yet clear. Macmillan may have in mind some of the harmless concessions offered by the West at Geneva in 1959 (and since withdrawn), such as a ceiling on allied troops in West Berlin and a cutback in Western propaganda activities. But there was no sign yet that the basic Western policy on Berlin, and Germany as a whole--reunification based on free elections--had changed one whit. Insisted Macmillan: "The fact of our right to be in Berlin cannot be in question. Let there be no mistake. This is an issue on which the people of the Western world are resolute. It is a principle they will defend."

West Germany's Adenauer was against the idea of talks at all, and France's De Gaulle was lukewarm, arguing that the allied position in Berlin was based on rights that could only be weakened by change. For the same reason in reverse, Nikita Khrushchev would be happy to negotiate.

Debunking in Advance. Khrushchev was less happy with the various schemes being nervously kicked around in the West. To the talk of partial U.S. mobilization that was filtering out of Washington, Nikita last week lashed back at a "Friendship Rally," held at the Kremlin. "Saber rattling is not new and does not take much brains," cried Khrushchev. "It does not scare the Russian people." To the idea of economic sanctions against Russia, he retorted: "Threats of cutting off trade naturally will not prevent our signing a German peace treaty." As for the idea of a worldwide quarantine of Russia by breaking off diplomatic relations with the Russians (proposed by U.S. Columnist David Lawrence), "There is nothing new in that either. The West already tried living without diplomatic relations with us . . . The attempt failed . . . The authors are doomed to dismal failure."

Khrushchev was still insisting on his scheme for "free city" status for West Berlin and wanted no one to water it down, not even Senate Democratic Leader Mike Mansfield of Montana, whose own pet plan seemed to contain germs of the Moscow thinking. Mansfield suggested that, if the free-city idea is to be considered, why not include Communist East Berlin in it as well as West Berlin? This Khrushchev could not swallow. Huffed Nikita: "Mansfield loses his sense of reality. He demands that free-city status apply also to democratic (i.e., Communist) Berlin, which is an integral part of the sovereign German Democratic Republic--its capital." Back home, Mansfield had already backed away from his proposal, saying he had merely mentioned it to start debate.

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