DIPLOMACY: Terribly High Price

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Home from his trip to the SEATO Conference in Manila, Secretary of State John Foster Dulles was feeling gloomy. In Manila he had been dismayed to see how successful the Russians were in getting their summit-meeting propaganda across to Asians. In Washington he found U.S. newspaper front pages giving solemn treatment to the old Russian proposals, which, in effect, were aimed at undermining the strong points of the free world. Dulles decided that it was high time to put on the record some reasons why the U.S. is dead set against going to a summit meeting on Russian terms.

Arming himself for his press conference, Dulles dictated to his secretary a list of Russia's summit-meeting price tags. At the conference he rattled them off for newsmen. Under present Soviet terms, he said, the U.S. would have to pay a "terribly high price" for a summit meeting by agreeing to: ¶ Let satellite governments such as

Czechoslovakia and Rumania sit at the summit table as equals of independent Western governments. ¶ Accept the legitimacy of the East German puppet regime.

¶ Abandon the Big Four commitment to reunite Germany, a responsibility affirmed at Yalta and Potsdam, and confirmed by solemn promise of the Russians at the 1955 summit meeting in Geneva. ¶ Bow to the Russian demand that seats on important U.N. committees be equally divided between Communist and non-Communist governments. ¶ Accept a summit meeting agenda "so formulated that virtually every item—nine out of eleven—implies acceptance of a basic Soviet thesis that the Western powers reject."

In its early March memorandum to Moscow, the U.S. questioned whether Russia wanted a summit meeting "to take meaningful decisions" or "merely to stage a spectacle." Recalling that wording, a newsman asked Dulles if he thought that acceptance of Russia's terms would make a summit meeting a "spectacle." Replied Dulles: "It would mean that on the way to the summit we would have lost our shirt. Perhaps that would result in a 'spectacle.' "