The Nation: Summitry: From Peking to Moscow

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AND now, Moscow too. Bent on becoming a Sino-Soviet summiteer, Richard Nixon accepted an invitation to visit the Soviet capital late in May for talks with Soviet leaders that will cover "all major issues" affecting the two powers. The Moscow mission will thus apparently follow by several months the President's journey to Peking. If the world does not, in fact, move from an era of confrontation to one of negotiation, it will clearly not be because Nixon did not try.

Yet it was still to Peking that the President was looking first. Only a few days after the Moscow announcement, National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger and nine aides took off for China to make arrangements for the Nixon trip, now expected to take place early in January. After a two-day stopover in Hawaii so that they can arrive rested, the group will spend four days in Peking. While Kissinger and State Department China Expert Alfred Le S. Jenkins seek agreement on a general agenda, other aides will work out the logistics, including the possibility of using a communications satellite to facilitate press coverage.

After the China trip, if nothing upsets his plans, Nixon will become the first sitting U.S. President to visit Moscow and only the second to meet Russian leaders in the Soviet Union. Franklin Roosevelt traveled to Yalta for a fateful wartime conference with Joseph Stalin and Winston Churchill in 1945. Despite the postwar chill between the two nations, recent Presidents have been more than willing to seek better relations with the U.S.S.R. by going to Moscow. But Dwight Eisenhower's plans to visit the Kremlin crashed with the shooting down of a U.S. spy plane over Russia in 1960. At the time John Kennedy was killed, talks were under way about a possible presidential visit to Moscow in the spring of 1964. Lyndon Johnson was about to announce his acceptance of a Soviet invitation when the Russians invaded Czechoslovakia in 1968.

No Euphoria. Nixon was tense and solemn as he announced his latest travel plans at an unscheduled press conference. Then he accepted questions. No, the trips to Peking and Moscow were not directly related. "Neither trip is being taken for the purpose of exploiting what differences may exist between the two nations." Yes, Peking had been informed of the Moscow plans. So had Japan and the NATO allies. Both trips will be working trips, will include both Secretary of State William Rogers and Kissinger, and will be attended by "an absolute minimum of ceremony." Said Nixon: "The purpose of both visits is not simply cosmetics. We are not taking a trip for the sake of taking a trip." He still felt that summit meetings without a probability of substantive agreements ought to be avoided, since they only "create euphoria." Added the President: "We are not making that mistake."