THE NATIONS: Storm at Sea

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With political storm warnings flying at every threatened point, with forecasters issuing hourly revisions of his probable future course, with experts battening down and shoring up exposed positions against the expected assault, Nikita Khrushchev last week headed across the Atlantic toward New York and the U.N. General Assembly. His decision to come to New York by ship had its bright side. For ten whole days Nikita would presumably be reduced to nothing more than a disembodied presence at the other end of a radio circuit.

The Foot Stomper. For the West, this was a much appreciated relief. Scarcely had Khrushchev returned to Moscow last week from his Finnish jaunt (see below) when he pushed up to U.S. Ambassador Llewellyn Thompson at a diplomatic reception and blustered that the Soviets had secret information that the NATO nations were planning "a new provocation in September by sending a plane over the Black Sea." Aggressively, he added: "But we are ready and the orders are to shoot it down."

"That's a very serious statement," retorted Thompson. "Do you mean you would shoot down planes flying over international waters in the Black Sea?" Backing off, Khrushchev replied that he only meant Russia would shoot down any planes that flew along Soviet borders. "You send ships along our coasts and planes over Alaska," snapped Thompson. "We aren't interested in Alaska," said Khrushchev piously and then, abruptly, shifted to a renewal of his familiar de mand for a U.S. apology over the U-2 incident. Gesturing as if to stomp on Ambassador Thompson's foot, he declared: "If I step on your foot, you expect me to apologize. Why didn't you apologize for the U2? If you are strong, you can afford to apologize."

Russia's Deputy Premier Anastas Mikoyan tried to calm Nikita down by assuring him that Thompson was "in a very difficult position," and in the best wifely tradition, Mrs. Thompson announced that she was ready to accept all blame for the argument. But before tempers cooled, Nikita had spelled out one of his purposes in coming to the U.N.: to ask the General Assembly "to judge the U.S. as an aggressor" because of the U-2 and RB-47 flights.

Be My Guest. To make sure his New York propaganda show would not be wasted on run-of-the-mill diplomats, Nikita was also busy last week firing off notes urging the leaders of the neutralist nations to show up at the General Assembly, or stand revealed as no true peace lovers. So far, he had failed with the senior neutralist of them all—India's Jawaharlal Nehru, who still seemed disposed to keep his Sept. 19 date for a state visit to Pakistan. But Ghana's

Kwame Nkrumah, Indonesia's Sukarno, the U.A.R.'s Nasser and Yugoslavia's Tito had already announced that they would be in New York, and Ceylon's Mrs. Bandaranaike was making interested noises. In Latin America, the only chief of government who was publicly committed to come so far was the Dominican Republic's Generalissimo Trujillo, who is making a show of turning toward Russia out of fury at the U.S. But odds were that Trujillo's bitter enemy and presumptive "neutralist" bedfellow, Fidel Castro, would also be on hand.