CONFERENCES: Down to Business

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The Western delegates arrived in Geneva in a mood of no nonsense, no politics and not much hope. This was to be a scientific meeting of technical experts, but the Western scientists were uncertain whether the Eastern delegates would be in the same mood—or whether the Eastern delegates would be there at all.

Just before the scheduled start of "The Conference of Experts to Study the Possibility of Detecting Violations of a Possible Agreement on Suspension of Nuclear Tests," the Russians had threatened to boycott the talks unless the U.S. first agreed in advance to a ban on nuclear tests. The U.S. and its allies (Britain, France, Canada), rejecting this Soviet propaganda gambit, ordered their scientists to hold the conference among themselves if the Communist delegates (from Russia, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Rumania) failed to show up. This proved to be a shrewd move: the Communists arrived suddenly, and the conference began on schedule and with brightened hopes.

Declared Chief Western Delegate James B. Fisk, the lean and deliberate executive vice president of Bell Telephone Laboratories: "We embark, with every hope, on what can well be a historic mission—to lay the essential technical basis for the important decisions which lie ahead." To the Western scientists' surprise, Chief Soviet Delegate Yevgeny K. Fedorov, identified as a Soviet Sputnik specialist, spoke in the same vein. "It is not for us to decide the cessation of tests," he said. "This is up to the governments."

Although the Soviets inserted in their scientific delegation Semyon K. Tsarapkin, a professional cold-war curmudgeon and former Soviet United Nations delegate with a reputation for tirades against the West, the first private sessions were encouraging—not for the agreements reached but for the politics avoided. The delegates started exchanging papers that covered such "secret" ground that it was decided that not even their titles could be disclosed.

The blackboard was scribbled with equations—not only for the benefit of the scientists but for the hapless interpreters and stenographers. Said one interpreter: "You just can't imagine how difficult it is to break down linguistic barriers between Nobel prizewinners in physics."